Yahoo Finance Decline of secretaries sees number of women working in the City plunge
The number of women working in the City has fallen by a third since the 1990s as administrative roles like secretaries disappear from the Square Mile.
A report by the London Stock Exchange and the Centre for Economics & Business Research (CEBR) found that the number of female employees in the UK’s financial services industry has fallen by nearly 200,000 since 1997.
The desertion of women from the City was partly blamed on “the sharp decline in clerical and administrative roles (still prevalent in 1997) as the structural digitisation of the UK finance sector and economy gathered pace”.
However, women were hit harder than men by the rise of computers. Over the same period, the number of men working in the City declined by just 7pc to 467,000.
Julia Hoggett, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange, said the findings “reaffirms the uncomfortable truths – the inflexibilities, inequities and resistance to change that our industry is yet to fully address.
“Change has come, but so much more is required.”
While the number of women working in the City has fallen, their wages have grown at a much faster rate than men.
Women’s average wages in the finance sector have more than tripled since 1997, rising from £16,000 to over £50,000 in 2022.
Over the same period, the average earnings of a man in the City have just over doubled from £33,500 to over £80,000.
The report said: “In absolute terms, the peak number of women working in UK finance occurred in 1997, at which point there were approximately 589,000 women working in the UK’s finance sector.
“In 2022, this number had declined by more than 30pc to just over 400,000.”
Regulators are increasingly demanding that companies meet targets to boost female representation, especially in senior roles.
