UBS UBS Group AG

By Margot Patrick and Liz Hoffman 

Women working at the main U.K. arm of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. make 36% less than men, according to pay data released Friday, reflecting male domination of some of the highest-paid jobs at the U.S. bank.

Goldman said it has "significant work to do" after reporting that men make 36.4% more in median hourly pay and 55.5% more when hourly pay is averaged. Median bonus pay for men was 67.7% higher than for women.

The figures -- part of a U.K. effort to report annually on gender pay gaps -- are based on a snapshot at the bank's biggest U.K. unit, Goldman Sachs International, in April last year. They don't indicate that men are paid more than women for the same jobs, which is illegal in the U.K. Goldman didn't give figures for its U.S. business or other global units. It employs around 6,500 people in the U.K., with around 5,000 of them in the GSI unit.

The numbers come at a time of intense focus on how women are treated at work. U.S. companies including banks have been rocked in recent months by women's allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination.

Goldman is among the first big American banks to report its figures. Bank of New York Mellon Corp. on Thursday reported an 18% median pay gap and a 30% gap on median bonuses. Last month, the U.K.'s Barclays PLC reported a median gap of 44% between men and women's pay in the unit housing its investment bank, and a 73% gap on bonuses paid.

Goldman said the gap "reflects our current reality that there are more men than women in senior positions in our organization." In a memo Thursday to staff, Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein and President David Solomon said Goldman pays men and women in similar jobs with similar performance equally but said "the real issue for our firm and many corporations is the under-representation of women," especially in senior roles.

Goldman is trying to bolster its pipeline of junior women employees, with the idea that they will scale the ranks over time. By 2021, it aims to have women make up 50% of its incoming analyst class.

So far, the disclosures show that women typically make up around half of staff in junior and mid-level roles at banks and investment firms but only rarely more than a third of higher-paying roles.

The starkest figure at Goldman: Men make up 83% of its highest quartile of earners. In the lowest quartile, women represent 62.4% of workers, also widening the gap.

A look at its partnership -- a status symbol unmatched on Wall Street and doled out every two years to a select few -- supports that. Women make up about 15% of Goldman's 450 or so partners, and are twice as represented in back-office jobs like compliance, legal and human resources than in client-facing businesses, according to a Wall Street Journal review.

Women make up about 12% of partners in its trading operation, compared with about 25% of partners in support and control functions. Goldman's chief compliance officer and general counsel are women.

The firm, like Wall Street more broadly, has made progress. In 1996, seven of Goldman's 173 partners, just 4%, were women. But it is still an imbalance at a time when more women are graduating from college than men, and clients are more sensitive to the gender makeup of their advisers and vendors.

Mr. Solomon, who won a succession battle this week, has been vocal on the issue, and last summer pitched Goldman's board on a firmwide initiative to close the gap.

Write to Margot Patrick at margot.patrick@wsj.com and Liz Hoffman at liz.hoffman@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 16, 2018 15:36 ET (19:36 GMT)

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