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Why Is Hiring More Women In Financial Services So Beneficial

Posted on
February 25, 2020

It’s shocking that in 2020, companies are still decades behind. It has been proven by those willing to discover the progression of gender diversity in the workplace that hiring equal amounts of men and women makes for higher levels of innovation, productivity, customer satisfaction, profit and therefore a much better business performance overall. This concludes that women are just as beneficial to hire as men are, due to the idea that you are not only hiring more diversely in physical gender differences, but by doing this, you are hiring more diverse brains.

Research about the differences between male and female brains has been going on for centuries. Male scientists, right from the beginning of this research, have been trying to prove their hypothesis that men’s brains are bigger in size than women’s, and therefore, men are smarter. As much proof as there has been showing that men’s brains, on average, are slightly bigger than women’s, there has been just as much proof that men also have more empty space in their brains.

In fact, it’s been recently proven that within the brain, the majority of people will have a ‘mosaic’ of gender characteristics. This means that it will be very unlikely that any one female or male will only have the characteristics of their own gender.

This has been very interesting for scientists, as for a very long time, everyone has been taught that because of the physical differences between genders, men and women are different mentally, and possess different abilities, but this is not so true. The majority of gender discrimination is learnt, and not necessarily through parenting either. Most children learn the gender ‘conventions’ through school, through friends, through living experiences, and not through their family at all.

Men learn their dominance through the patriarchal society. They aren’t born with it. In fact, baby girls will usually start talking before baby boys, which scientists used to think was due to females brains developing quicker than boys, but research now shows it’s because people tend to talk more to girl babies, meaning that on average, they pick up how to speak quicker.

So, with male and female brains working similarly overall, and definitely not affecting your company negatively, why are less women hired into the Financial Services industry? Seeing as women currently make up just over 51% of the world’s population, companies need to start showing these statistics when hiring. With the rate in hiring women currently, it will take over 100 years to get to full gender equality in companies. This needs to change.

72% of female millennials working in Financial Services earn the same or more than their partner if they are in a dual-income relationship. It is proved that when women work higher paid jobs, the health and lifestyle of their whole family increases, including a significant increase for their husband and children. Hiring women in Financial Services is then clearly positively impacting and improving society and the economy as a whole.

With men now also getting longer paid paternity leave, it is also not affecting your business to hire a woman whom may take time off to have children, although unfortunately, most firms would rather hire a male in their 20-30s, than a female in their 20-30s, due to the chance that they may decide to start a family. A third of women interviewed for jobs also get directly asked whether they are pregnant or expecting to start a family anytime soon, which is clear discrimination and will hopefully become unnecessary as more businesses offer longer paid parental leave for fathers.

Less than 60% of Financial Services industry leaders say their business has a strategy to promote diversity, however, 61% of employees say their company isn’t doing enough to encourage diversity. There is still much more to be done, and with the average pay gap for the UK overall at 9.7%, it’s also staggering to see that in Financial Services, this is significantly increased to 22%, and 46% for bonuses. With all the proof of the benefits that women can bring to your Financial Services company, these statistics drastically need amendments. What can you do to help make a change in 2020?

Make sure to have a read of our Salary & Benefit Census to find out more about the gender imbalance in the Financial Services industry:

https://www.bwd-search.co.uk/white-papers/bwd-salary-and-benefit-census-2019

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BWD Financial Services Earnings & Benefits Census 2022/23

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BWD Financial Services Earnings & Benefits Census 2021/22

This BWD Census is designed to be the definitive reference guide to salaries, earnings, and benefits in the UK financial services sector.

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BWD Salary and Benefits Census
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