Gender bias claim for finance & accounting
> Accounting & finance gender bias claim > Women believe men promoted more > Men and women see gender pay gap
Women working in finance and accounting believe there is a gender bias at play that favours male colleagues particularly when it comes to pay rises and promotions.
According to new research from recruitment firm Robert Half, women are working in Australia’s finance and accounting industry in record numbers yet 48 per cent of them believe men get paid more than they do for performing the same work.
Another 24 per cent of women in the Robert Half survey group believed men were more likely than women to reach management.
The survey group of more than 400 people was confined to finance and HR managers. Interestingly, 30 per cent of male respondents also believed women were being paid less than men for doing the same job. Only 10 per cent of the men surveyed believed men had a better chance of advancing to management level than women.
Senior Manager at Robert Half, Megan Alexander, said consultants hadn’t detected a gender bias at the hiring stage.
“When filling a role, gender simply doesn’t come into play. We see employers make hiring decisions based on merit and past performance and this is where their attentions should be focused,” Ms Alexander said.
The Robert Half research follows the June 17 release of the Equal Opportunity in the Workplace Agency’s Pay, Power & Position report that found senior women executives were getting promoted in vastly smaller numbers than men yet the few that make it to board level were “punching above their weight”.
Based on an in depth look at male and female talent within the top 200 ASX-listed companies, the EOWA found there were 12 male board members for every one female board member. According to the EOWA, “once appointed women appear to be at least as influential as their male counterparts. The research shows that among the 89 individual women holding board seats, nearly half chair at least one board committee while only a third of the 1091 men holding board seats chair at least one committee.”
The research work was undertaken by Macquarie University in 2008 as part of the EOWA’s Census Report that is released every two years.
The Census found the number of women filling executive roles had gone backwards since the last Census in 2006 and that there existed “a significant ” gender pay gap. Female executive managers earned less than half of what their male equivalents were paid.
The fresh release of findings looked at how women perform when they finally do get to the top.
