Sexism and the City

This won’t come as a surprise: women in financial services believe they are “unfairly” paid. The Times reports a survey of 6,000 people which revealed only 23% of women believe they are fairly paid.

According to The Times, the pay gap in the sector is 21%: women average £45.46 an hour while men average £55.16. It’s not hard therefore to see where the perception of unfairness comes from.

Peter Healey, CEO of eFinancialCareers, the company behind the survey, says there has been progress but “it’s not enough to really change that imbalance”.

In a moment of perfect timing, the Financial Times reports that Goldman Sachs is set to report that its gender pay gap widened in 2023, the gap growing from 53.2% to 54%. That’s not going to do much for the sector’s image.

The right stuff

Over in the US, the trend of corporate CEOs taking on and supporting political causes is under attack again. Dubbing the phenomenon, “political posturing” , a team of legal profs concludes it “creates significant business risks and social concerns”.

There are examples of course. Bud Light’s use of trans activist Dylan Mulvaney (pictured) was followed by a consumer backlash, while Disney’s support of LGBTQ rights saw the removal of special administrative status in Florida by the state governor.

Instead, the academics suggest executives make a public promise to remain neutral—an “anti-political Posturing Pledge”.

Trouble is: neutrality is always going to collide with reality, or to put it another way, with political issues where a company cannot remain neutral. Oh, and that hoary old chestnut “doing right”. A stance of corporate neutrality where a company should be “doing right” starts to look like: “We don’t give a …”. I think you get the point. Shareholders simply have to price it in.

Ill at ease

Here’s one more take on CEO politics. Another academic crew looked at CEO political ideology and how it collides with crisis management. In this case, the boffins used the Covid-19 pandemic as the case study.

The findings are a bit disturbing. Their analysis reveals that “firms with liberal-leaning CEOs demonstrated a quicker public response to Covid-19”.

Of course, the study begs all sorts of questions but, just for a moment, ponder what a strange world we live in.

Where’s the justice?

Elsewhere, observers see politics and the potential erosion of the rule of law as an externality companies should plan for.

The warning comes after the World Justice Project, a campaign group, says the rule of law is in “recession” around the world.

That has implications, potentially creating governance gaps and increased risk, according to Thomson Reuters Institute director Natalie Runyon.

In a world where populism is on the rise, war rages in Europe, climate change is an ever-present danger and economies face uncertainty, a crumbling in the rule of the law is all we need.