The year 2021 sounds both futuristic and progressive — almost as though a debate on gender equality and general diversity in the workplace would be redundant by now. However, there is still a lot of work to be done in the finance sector and it is an issue that needs continual discussion to keep it alive.
But the conversations are being had and they are being heard. We had to start somewhere and, compared to 100 — even 50 — years ago, great strides are being made.
In recent years, the number of women in leadership roles has grown considerably, offering hope and inspiration to the next generation. Countries led by women — Denmark, Finland, New Zealand and Norway, for example — have been some of the most successful in navigating the Covid-19 pandemic, while the US has appointed its first female vice-president, a woman of colour — a huge step forward.
Closer to home, there are a number of inspirational women in the mortgage industry contributing to the progress being made on equality, and not just of the sexes. In 2018, Mortgage Strategy held a roundtable to discuss their experiences of building a career in a male-dominated environment. In recognition of International Women’s Day on 8 March, we gathered the participants together again to assess how far we have come in three years and how we can get to where we want to be.
“There’s definitely been a great deal of progress over the past three years, but we’re making up for hundreds of years where there hasn’t been change,” says Brightstar director of people development Clare Jupp.
“When you look at the industry as a whole, there’s definitely an increased awareness of a lack of diversity and more appreciation of the importance of women in the boardroom, so there are moves in the right direction.”
Women in Finance Charter
Jupp has an active involvement with the Women in Finance Charter, which encourages its signatories to aim for key actions to achieve equality in their firms, including female representation at senior management level.
“At the last review there were 370 signatories covering over 900,000 financial services employees, which is brilliant.”
Recent figures from the government-backed Hampton-Alexander review show that FTSE 100 firms reached 34.5 per cent female board representation in January, achieving its target of a third by 2020. There are now no all-male boards in the FTSE’s top 350 firms, although some have been accused of having a ‘token’ female representative and not seeking further progression.
Mortgage Intelligence managing director Sally Laker says she has always appointed “the right person for the role”, and it happens that they are often female.
“We’ve just appointed a female head of protection at senior management level, so we’ve got a large number of women working for Mortgage Intelligence at that level,” says Laker. “It’s pretty evenly spread, but not by design. It’s because we always want the right person for the role. That’s got to be the most important thing.”
Pay gap
Despite the increase in female representation on boards, figures out this month from law firm Fox and Partners show that women directors in the FTSE’s top 350 firms earn 66 per cent less on average than their male counterparts.
“We have actually gone backwards despite three years of all of us banging the drum for change,” says Digital Cat consultancy director Maria Harris. “I would have liked to see at least a little progress, but I really didn’t expect us to go backwards.
“I’m also really worried about this year’s figures because of Covid. There is the impact of working from home and people having to maybe take time out from work for caring, and because we cannot be in offices we also can’t network.”
Harris also highlights concerns for women attempting to obtain investment for start-up businesses or to acquire the experience needed to be appointed to a senior position.
“There was an investment pay-gap study done recently about how much money goes to start-ups and how much to female-led or female-run companies. The numbers are really damning.
“There’s lots of conversation, which is great. I don’t think I’ve sat at a board meeting in the past six months where gender equality, inclusion and Black Lives Matter haven’t been openly discussed, but at some point it needs to turn into action.
“I had a conversation with a board colleague yesterday and I asked the question: ‘What is this board going to look like in five years’ time?’ The reality is that it will look exactly the same if we do nothing. Change is not going to happen without conscious effort and without people physically taking action.
“We still hear a lot about how difficult it is to recruit because it’s hard to find women with the right experience, but it’s such a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you go looking for women with amazing chief operating officer or chief executive experience, they are harder to find simply because they haven’t had the opportunity to do those jobs before.
“People need to be braver and make more effort to be open to women with transferable skillsets — women from other industries who can bring in skills and experience, even if from another sector — or take the jump and promote somebody into that role and support them.”
Jupp adds that the government has recently launched Investing in Women in Code, a commitment by financial services firms to improve female entrepreneurs’ access to tools, resources and finance, which should help with investment opportunities and industry experience.
In 2018, Legal & General set out to be more inclusive by 2020, and its head of broker sales, Marie Catch, says this has been achieved, but companies must be mindful that they achieve equality with the right approach.
“Even within the small part of the business I’m in, Legal & General Home Finance, we’ve had our first female chief executive [Claire Singleton], which is great, and we’re starting to see more female appointments in more senior roles,” says Catch. “You have to be careful, however, because a male who could be right for the job may not apply when he knows there’s a target number of females to appoint.
“So you have to be mindful of how that comes across, but I think inclusion is important, not just for females but for the wider community. More businesses are realising this contributes to their success.”
She says further progression has come in talking more openly about issues that were somewhat taboo in the past.
“What I have noticed in the industry is people talking more openly about the menopause. It seems it’s becoming a conversation piece because there are a lot more females in the workplace.
“Legal & General has been highlighting the fact that there are [personal] situations that people are going through, and looking at how it can be supportive. It’s the start of this becoming a more comfortable topic.”
Fresh challenges
The past year has seen new challenges faced by women in the industry, with many juggling childcare, their careers and other responsibilities. For some this has been a positive experience, encouraging employers to offer more flexible working opportunities because it has been proved that remote working can be successful. However, others believe that this will only add to stress levels, particularly for working mothers, and that considerable support will be needed as we transition out of this period.
Coreco sales operations manager Hayley O’Reilly has a one-year-old daughter and says the support of her employer has been key to her getting through lockdown.
“It is tough juggling everything, but I think lockdown has made employers realise the reality of it and understand that it is a challenge coping with children and working.
“Coreco has always been supportive of flexible working. Sometimes in a management meeting [my daughter] will just pop up for five minutes of fame and nobody makes a big deal about it. They understand the hours I work and it is never a problem if there’s an emergency, so I’m grateful for that. But I know not everyone has that experience.”
Laker agrees: “I think, overall, lockdown has changed the dynamic of the family. Both parents are more involved with the family and home life, so there is more equality in that sense now.”
Primis chief operating officer Toni Smith has two teenage children, one of whom is studying for GCSE exams from home. She says they each do their own thing but are always able to meet for lunch.
“We endeavour on a daily basis not to schedule meetings for any member of staff between 12pm and 2pm, so it enables them to take a break because we are all sat at least 10 hours a day behind a laptop. We need to enable parents who have children at home to take time out for a walk, to take them to the park, or to sit down and have lunch. They need that complete time out from the office that they would have if they were still working in one.”
Knowledge Bank founder and director Nicola Firth says that remote working has always been an option for her staff.
“We’re a business, but we have always taken a ‘family first’ approach,” she says.
“We don’t have set hours, but everybody has a job to do and they get it done. This can only help with recruiting more women into the business because it gives them flexibility around childcare.”
Jupp adds that, while the option to work remotely is a positive thing, it could damage efforts to get women into the workplace.
“What I wouldn’t want to see is working from home as an alternative to working in the office,” she says.
“We have worked so hard to get women into the workspace. It could be damaging to them and the progress we have made to be permanently in the home environment, especially with the association of the home with women — whether for work or for domesticity. If you take women’s faces and identities out of the workspace, we go backwards. Women need the office and the office needs women.”
Flexible working
Firth agrees that it is important for women to be visible in order to stand out and climb the career ladder, but says flexible working operates well for her business.
“It’s very business specific, but there has to be a balance somewhere and flexible working has not really been offered before. Lockdown, however, has proved that working from home is not sitting around with your feet up.”
Social media has been lauded for helping women to boost their visibility and confidence. They have been notoriously less confident than their male counterparts in highlighting their achievements or putting themselves forward for recognition.
Smith says: “We run a network called Leading Ladies for our female brokers, to build a bit of camaraderie, build each other up, demystify mortgages and advise on the best use of social media. One of our female brokers was on Channel 4’s Steph’s Packed Lunch the other day because she’s become so prolific on social media as a sort of mortgage expert.
“Being the more empathetic gender tends to hamper our self-belief and makes us more self-aware, so I think we have to lead by example. We’ve got to enter uncharted territory for females and let them see that we’re not going to be exposed or shut down by putting ourselves out there.”
Financial education
The whole group agrees that financial education is also key to getting more women into the sector.
“We should have more about managing one’s finances on the school curriculum in the early years. That’s a huge gap because it’s such an important part of everyone’s lives so that they are equipped and confident enough to go into their first job,” says Laker.
Firth notes: “There are strides being made at education level, but the bigger challenge is older women who have not had those doors open to them.
“When we advertise for jobs, men and women look at those ads differently,” she says. “Men will look at an ad and say ‘I could do that, no problem. I’ll wing it,’ whereas women focus on what they can’t do.
“It falls to us as role models to make the change. For me personally, I don’t feel very comfortable winning awards or being written about; I want to do my job, but I don’t really want any recognition.
“But I’m really pleased by the comments I’ve had on social media saying I’m inspiring, so that’s why I don’t shy away from it.”
The consensus is that a lot has been accomplished, but there is so much more to do in achieving equality in the sector. That change starts with this generation.
