When City executive Selena* logged on for a Teams call with five senior male colleagues in spring 2021, she was gobsmacked.
She had spent weeks warning bosses that the London-based investment firm risked falling foul of European regulations. She had gathered data and presented supporting evidence, but was repeatedly brushed off. “Nobody wanted to listen,” she said.
So her jaw dropped that afternoon when a male colleague raised the issue and immediately gained support from the same boss who had ignored her. “I had to stop the meeting,” she recalls. “I said: ‘Why does it take a white, middle-aged man to deliver the exact same message that I’ve been delivering over the last few weeks?’”
When her comments were dismissed, and described as “over the top”, it was the final straw. “The realisation was: it doesn’t matter how hard I work, how talented, how committed I am. They will never ever recognise me,” she said.
Selena – now in her mid-40s – later resigned, bringing her decades-long career to a temporary halt, and leaving another City executive’s behaviour unchecked.
Her story was among those shared by more than 40 women from the financial services industry during a closed-door session of the House of Commons’ Treasury committee’s Sexism in the City inquiry, the report and recommendations of which are due to be released this week.
Prompted in part by the sexual harassment allegations against hedge fund boss Crispin Odey, the inquiry is meant to determine whether meaningful progress had been made since the committee’s last review in 2018. But the shocking stories recently shared with MPs for its investigation – which ranged from office bullying to allegations as serious as rape – suggest the post-#MeToo focus on diversity and inclusion has failed to eradicate widespread misogyny.
Instead, the “old boys’ club”, according to the committee’s interim report, has been pushed into the shadows. Sexual harassment may be less prevalent in the office, but is more often taking place at conferences and work trips, while bad behaviour has merely become “more underhand and pernicious”, the committee explained.
“We have been quite taken aback by just how little things have shifted in the last five years,” said Conservative MP and Treasury committee chair Harriett Baldwin, speaking before the report’s publication.
There were hopes the dial might move thanks to a post-pandemic boom in flexible working, mandatory gender pay gap reporting, as well as the voluntary uptake of the women in finance charter – the companies who sign up must set targets for boosting diversity in their senior ranks.
Unfortunately, little had changed by the time 26-year-old Victoria* joined a large global bank through a graduate scheme in 2019. She felt prepared for a career in a male-dominated industry, having studied computer sciences and watched both her parents navigate roles in the City. “But I don’t know if I entirely expected it to be so alienating,” Victoria said.
She found herself regularly dodging bosses’ comments about whether male colleagues were her boyfriends and was criticised for being “chatty”. But she pushed on, and was hired as one of three women on a 60-strong quants team – which involves banks using complex mathematical models to price financial products.
Despite her enthusiasm, and requests to attend regular meetings to understand team goals, she felt repeatedly shut out. “I was told to just sit there and be quiet. It’s not something women want to be told.” Victoria’s role was later made redundant, and she has since moved out of the sector.
Experiences like Victoria’s have left MPs wondering whether a hyper-focus on boosting female leadership – while it is an important piece of the puzzle – has allowed firms to avoid tackling other harmful employment practices.
“A lot of the people that want to make it better think that just having more women will make it better,” the Labour MP and fellow committee member Angela Eagle said. “And they’re not looking at the power relationships, and how earnings and incentives work in particular bits of the sector … so I still think there’s been a misanalysis of what needs to be done.”
There are also concerns that smaller firms such as boutique investment and hedge funds have been able to avoid scrutiny, as they are exempt from pay gap reporting and proposals to force larger City firms to report diversity strategies and targets.
It puts those smaller firms at greater risk of harbouring the worst offenders, Baldwin said. “You’d have a harder time recommending to your daughter that she go and work for some of these firms, than you might for some of the big corporates,” said the MP, who herself was the target of inappropriate behaviour early in her career at JP Morgan.
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Julie, a 40-year veteran of the insurance industry, said a ban on non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and gagging orders, which protect the reputation of the worst-offending firms, could be one simple fix.
She spent the first few decades of her career navigating bouts of bullying, being sidelined after her maternity leave, and feeling forced to sign an NDA that left her unable to challenge one employer’s dismissal. But Julie did not expect further discrimination when she joined a new broker in 2018.
Her team leader was a younger man, but any hope that he would take a more progressive approach was quickly dashed. Requests to work from home met severe scrutiny, and she was pushed to make up time for attending hospital appointments. When she was diagnosed with a brain tumour, that boss sent helpline and hospice care leaflets to Julie’s husband. “He was just awful,” she said.
She then watched on as he was hired by another firm, and placed on its diversity committee. “There’s still a long way to go. Men get away with a lot.”
Any palpable change could hinge on whether Baldwin’s Treasury committee is willing to give the recommendations in its report – aimed at government and City regulators – some teeth.
The committee’s 2018 review, published under its former chair, Nicky Morgan, raised worthwhile concerns about the City’s pervasive “alpha male” culture, as well as how the structure of bonus payouts and a focus on presenteeism had deterred and disadvantaged women in finance. But more glaring, in hindsight, were its omissions.
There was no reference to the scandal that unfolded months earlier around the men-only Presidents Club dinner, where hired hostesses were allegedly groped and sexually harassed by the invited businessmen and bankers. None either of the impact of the #MeToo movement, which gathered pace in 2017 as women in all industries across the world began sharing personal stories of sexual harassment on social media.
Baldwin has promised that her report will feature “actionable recommendations”: “This is going to be very much a summary of some progress, but very much ‘work in progress’.”
But the committee’s ultimate goal, Eagle added, is that it will be the last report of its kind. “I hope that in five years, we won’t have to do this again,” she said.
*Not her real name
Robert Johnson is a UK-based business writer specializing in finance and entrepreneurship. With an eye for market trends and a keen interest in the corporate world, he offers readers valuable insights into business developments.
