Goldman Sachs Reveals Yawning U.K. Gender Pay Gap -- 2nd Update
March 16 2018 - 3:51PM
Dow Jones News
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)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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