London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Monday, Sep 01, 2025

How long for UK gender pay gap to be bridged at top of finance? About 30 years

How long for UK gender pay gap to be bridged at top of finance? About 30 years

Aviva boss Amanda Blanc warns of ‘frustratingly slow’ pace of changes in pay at senior levels
It will take 30 years to reach gender parity at senior levels of the financial services industry if nothing is done to improve the “frustratingly slow” current rate, the Treasury’s champion on the issue has warned.

Amanda Blanc, who is also chief executive of the insurer Aviva, said women and business could not afford to wait that long to achieve equality.

The government’s women in finance charter was launched in 2016 as a voluntary agreement committing firms to gender diversity targets. More than 400 City institutions have signed up to it, including Aviva, the Bank of England, London Stock Exchange, the fund manager BlackRock, the banks Morgan Stanley, Santander and Monzo, and the building society Nationwide.

Research by the women in finance taskforce found the proportion of senior management among the 400 signatories who were female increased by just one percentage point between 2018 and 2020, from 31% to 32%. It calculated that at this rate, it would take the financial services industry another 30 years to achieve gender parity at senior levels.

Blanc, who has run Aviva since July 2020 and was appointed by the Treasury as the women in finance charter champion a year ago, said: “Progress towards gender equality in the financial sector remains frustratingly slow. Women, companies and society cannot afford to wait 30 years when we can achieve this in 10.

“We’ve got to work quicker and harder, for the sake of women, for the sake of society and because a more diverse business is a more productive and innovative one.”

She unveiled a series of proposals to tackle the problem: mandating shortlists for senior positions with 50% female representation, greater use of psychometric testing in recruitment, removing male-biased recruitment advertising, creating diverse interview panels and mid-career returner programmes to help women move back into work.

Her other recommendations included: advertising all jobs as flexible, publishing bonus payments of all senior managers, formal sponsorship programmes for women at all levels, full-pay equal parental leave and benefits packages that support women at key life stages including menopause.

Blanc said senior female role models and zero-tolerance policies for harassment were crucial for improving culture and behaviour. She also recommended setting detailed annual gender representation targets for all parts of the organisation, a real-time dashboard to showcase progress against gender targets that is publicly available, and embedding gender parity targets into scorecards for all senior management linked to executives achieving gender parity targets.

This means that bonus payments should be linked to executives achieving gender parity targets.

The proposals, drawn up by the taskforce in partnership with the consultancy Bain & Company and published a day before International Women’s Day, are based on interviews with bosses of financial firms, academic research, and more than 100 responses to a survey of the charter’s signatories.

Nearly six out of 10 women (58%) say caring responsibilities have stopped them applying for promotion or a new job, and one in five (19%) have left a job because it was too hard to balance work and care, according to separate new research by market researcher Ipsos UK and Business in the Community.

While just over a third of all adults, and 44% of working adults, have caring responsibilities, the research found that they are not spread equally. Women account for 85% of sole carers for children and 65% of sole carers for older adults. More people from ethnic minority backgrounds (42%) have caring responsibilities than from white backgrounds.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Chinese and Indian Leaders Pursue Amity Amid Global Shifts
European Union Plans for Ukraine Deployment
ECB Warns Against Inflation Complacency
Concerns Over North Cyprus Casino Development
Shipping Companies Look Beyond Chinese Finance
Rural Exodus Fueling European Wildfires
China Hosts Major Security Meeting
Chinese Police Successfully Recover Family's Savings from Livestream Purchases
Germany Marks a Decade Since Migrant Wave with Divisions, Success Stories, and Political Shifts
Liverpool Defeat Arsenal 1–0 with Szoboszlai Free-Kick to Stay Top of Premier League
Prince Harry and King Charles to Meet in First Reunion After 20 Months
Chinese Stock Market Rally Fueled by Domestic Investors
Israeli Airstrike in Yemen Kills Houthi Prime Minister
Ukrainian Nationalist Politician Andriy Parubiy Assassinated in Lviv
Corporate America Cuts Middle Management as Bosses Take On Triple the Workload
Parents Sue OpenAI After Teen’s Death, Alleging ChatGPT Encouraged Suicide
Amazon Faces Lawsuit Over 'Buy' Label on Digital Streaming Content
Federal Reserve Independence Questioned Amid Trump’s Push to Reshape Central Bank
British Politics Faces Tumultuous Autumn After Summer of Rebellions and Rising Farage Momentum
US Appeals Court Rules Against Most Trump-Era Tariffs
UK Sought Broad Access to Apple Users’ Data, Court Filing Reveals
UK Bank Shares Dive Over Potential Tax on Sector
Germany’s Auto Industry Sheds 51,500 Jobs in First Half of 2025 Amid Deepening Crisis
Bruce Willis Relocated Due to Advanced Dementia
French and Korean Nuclear Majors Clash As EU Launches Foreign Subsidy Probe
EU Stands Firm on Digital Rules as Trump Warns of Retaliation
Getting Ready for the 3rd Time in Its History, Germany Approves Voluntary Military Service for Teenagers
Argentine President Javier Milei Evacuated After Stones Thrown During Campaign Event
Denmark Confronts U.S. Diplomat Over Covert Trump-Linked Influence in Greenland
Starmer Should Back Away from ECHR, Says Jack Straw
Trump Demands RICO Charges Against George Soros and Son for Funding Violent Protests
Taylor Swift Announces Engagement to NFL Star Travis Kelce
France May Need IMF Bailout, Warns Finance Minister
Chinese AI Chipmaker Cambricon Posts Record Profit as Beijing Pushes Pivot from Nvidia
After the Shock of Defeat, Iranians Yearn for Change
Ukraine Finally Allows Young Men Aged Eighteen to Twenty-Two to Leave the Country
The Porn Remains, Privacy Disappears: How Britain Broke the Internet in Ten Days
YouTube Altered Content by Artificial Intelligence – Without Permission
Welcome to The Definition of Insanity: Germany Edition
Just a reminder, this is Michael Jackson's daughter, Paris.
Spotify’s Strange Move: The Feature Nobody Asked For – Returns
Manhunt in Australia: Armed Anti-Government Suspect Kills Police Officers Sent to Arrest Him
China Launches World’s Most Powerful Neutrino Detector
How Beijing-Linked Networks Shape Elections in New York City
Ukrainian Refugee Iryna Zarutska Fled War To US, Stabbed To Death
Elon Musk Sues Apple and OpenAI Over Alleged App Store Monopoly
2 Australian Police Shot Dead In Encounter In Rural Victoria State
Vietnam Evacuates Hundreds of Thousands as Typhoon Kajiki Strikes; China’s Sanya Shuts Down
UK Government Delays Decision on China’s Proposed London Embassy Amid Concerns Over Redacted Plans
A 150-Year Tradition to Be Abolished? Uproar Over the Popular Central Park Attraction
×