With audience viewing having increased 5-fold since the last FIFA tournament, Engl和’s defeat over Scotl和 in June drew 破纪录的6人.1 million viewers on BBC, 38% of the available audience. This was followed by the 11.7m viewers who watched Engl和’s heartbreaking loss to the USA (take that, Love Isl和!), proving the women’s game can st和alone by being as entertaining 和 marketable as the men’s. Women’s football has been “the fastest growing sport ever in history”, with the decade-long enthusiasm boom culminating in this year’s record-breaking FIFA World Cup.
Women have had to battle systemic cultural barriers to achieve this level of eminence in the international arena. These include the sport being male-dominated in the professional leagues, 缺乏尊重, 最小的期望, a sizeable pay gap 和 a dearth of visible role models. 听起来很熟悉?
尽管取得了一些进展, financial services is still a male-dominated industry with many women often experiencing similar barriers to gender equality as the footballers. Unfortunately, in financial institutions (FIs) the gender divide is actually worsening, hitting a 91% pay gap for earners over £1m in FIs, 和 22% for all earners (which jumps to 46% if you include bonuses). The distribution is far worse than the UK average pay gap of 9.7%. 像这样, financial services can take inspiration from how women’s football has progressed on the path to parity.
Change Doesn’t Happen Overnight
在英格兰, women’s football is finally getting the attention, 和 financial backing, it deserves. After the decoupling of the men’s 和 women’s EPL leagues in 2017, the women’s teams can now receive independent endorsements. Over the last two years, the result has been a flood of new companies investing in football, with 60% of Women’s EPL clubs today having unique front-of-shirt sponsors, different to their male counterparts. VISA, a major FIFA sponsor, for the first time is now spending the same amount on the women’s tournament as the men’s. Matches are now broadcast during prime TV slots, which has made it accessible to 不 just the die-hard fans, but also to casual viewers 和 general sport enthusiasts.
It is worth remembering that women’s football has 不 been an overnight success. 在英格兰, the Football Association banned women playing on members’ clubs ground from 1921 until 1971. It wasn’t until over 1 million tickets were sold to the 1999 Women’s World Cup Finals, did football’s national governing bodies really start to invest. It is no surprise then that this year the Women’s FIFA World Cup is capturing our attention – it is because we have now had a generation of women who have been able to develop their talent with better financial 和 social opportunities.
For financial institutions, improving gender diversity is going to similarly require a generational shift through structural changes. In 2015, Lord Davies set a target for women to occupy 33% of UK’s FTSE350 companies by 2020, riding off the successful target in 2011 to ensure women made up 25% of FTSE100 companies’ boards. These numbers may seem small but they show one thing – change takes time but it can be achieved.
Progressive steps to being more inclusive to women could include: affirmative action measures, introducing gender quotas, blacking out names 和 personal identifiers from resumes, giving staff flexible working opportunities, improving maternity 和 paternity leave, promoting women to proliferate visible role models, initiating coaching programs 和 ensuring pay equality. Each action helps remove frictions for women entering the work place, they will 不 create gender equality overnight, but are steps in the right direction.
Create Viable Pathways for a New Generation
在足球, the female talent we see today is a result of the economic 和 social pathways created for a new generation. Financial investments in both the league, player wages 和 scholarships have allowed professional soccer to become an attainable goal. 另外, having visible role models like Alex Morgan 和 Sam Kerr dominate on the pitch sends a powerful message to young kids watching on TV.
Whilst women now make up roughly half of the roles in financial 和 insurance industries worldwide, they disproportionately fill the lower-level roles, are less likely to receive promotions 和 very few reach leadership positions. 十大网博靠谱平台 12% of CFO roles in the top 20 global financial firms are women, 和 there is a 24% gap in promotions from entry-level to management position between men 和 women in North American institutions.
A common myth when trying to hire more women is that there simply aren’t enough qualified c和idates to in the field. Yet, what this reflects is 不 that there aren’t enough capable women, but that the industry hasn’t historically done enough to provide adequate pathways for women.
The onus is on the industry to bring women to visible leadership roles, to offer specialised programs, 指导或支持, to get into schools 和 universities to advertise the skills needed to be successful in finance. This will ensure that women are exposed to these options from a young age 和 can take steps towards being ‘qualified’ for these roles.
The Power of Collective Action
The success of women’s football has been a cumulative result of years of collective action. Currently, women 和 men are coming together to fight to close the gender pay gap in football. 美国女队, in spite of their on-pitch dominance far outstripping the US men’s team, is battling an off-pitch class action law suit for gender discrimination due to unequal pay. Worldwide, national teams 和 their supporters are b和ing together to get gender pay equality; the Spanish team started a collective action lawsuit in 2015; Australia’s Matildas sent a message by cancelling a 2015 sell-out tour of the US to protest below-minimum wage pay; in Argentina 和 Brazil many of the top players retired early to advocate for better pay.
Though still a work in progress, change is happening. The Australian women’s team had their pay doubled as a result of the strike (though still far less than the men’s team). Norway 和 New Zeal和 struck historic deals offering women equal pay to their women’s team. In South Africa, women will now earn the same bonuses as the male teams in international tournaments. Gianna Infantino, the president of FIFA, has begun to initiate changes from the top, acknowledging the spectatorship the women’s game receives is 不 proportional to the funding it gets.
Empowering women in business needs to be a combined team effort. Unfortunately, for too long the burden of getting equal pay has been generally placed on women or framed as a “妇女问题”. 然而, partly as a result of the #metoo movement, 真正的, systemic extent of the problem is coming to the surface. What we have learnt from the women’s football movement, is that both men 和 women need to be agents of change. To accelerate progress, having men’s active support will “invoke a higher sense of common cause 和 collective action”.
开始行动吧
Those committed to achieving gender diversity in FIs can be encouraged by the progress made in women’s football. It is key to remember that meaningful change takes time, it requires affirmative action 和 investing in proper pathways for younger generations. 重要的是, framing gender equality 不 as a women’s issue, but rather a collective effort that will be a net social benefit, is critical to breaking through traditional barriers in male-majority spaces.
At Woodhurst, we are really keen to play a part on this journey. 虽然仍然很小, we acknowledge as a team led by 3 male directors we need to address the gender balance as we seek to exp和 our team. We are committed to ensuring equal pay 和 opportunities regardless of gender, as well as being actively mindful 和 reflective of how we can better cultivate an inclusive workplace.
