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Tackling gender inequality from a recruitment perspective

Published on: 26 Apr 2019

As the UK’s leading job site for accountancy and finance professionals, GAAPweb aims to support candidates throughout their career.

When HM Treasury launched the Women in Finance Charter, GAAPweb were among the first 100 firms to pledge their support by becoming an official Charter signatory.

Every year we survey our accountancy and finance audience about their working lives including salary, progression and relocation. The results of this survey give job seekers on GAAPweb the chance to benchmark their salary against other finance professionals. However, a bi-product of this research is a unique insight in to the working lives of financial employees across the UK.

This year our survey revealed that 23% of Finance Directors who took part were female – an increase in female representation compared to 2016’s result (16%), however a slight decline from 2017’s result (24%). Whilst female representation in Finance Director positions has fluctuated YoY, the percentage of women in CFO positions has been declining with a low of 7% from this year’s survey.

Although female representation in senior finance roles is not yet showing a consistent positive projection, the gender pay gap is slowly reducing. In 2018 the pay gap was an average of £17,099 – 1% down on 2017 and 5% down on 2016.

In the last year, GAAPweb has:

  • Promoted the Charter to our audience of 500,000 experienced and qualified accountancy and finance professionals, as well as our corporate and recruitment consultancy clients.
  • Monitored the rate of change by carrying out the salary survey on an annual basis and publishing the results to increase awareness within the financial sector.
  • Maintained our 50:50 gender split within the management team.

This March, the HM Treasury published its Women in Finance Annual Review, revealing the most encouraging results yet. Of the firms that submitted their progress report, 87% had either met or were on track to meet their pre-agreed gender targets. GAAPweb were among the 45% that had already hit their gender targets – an achievement that we are immensely proud of, given our role in the recruitment process.