16/07/04

Women and Jokes will Become Rarer in the City

Patience Wheatcroft

A rash of sex discrimination claims is making firms wary of employing women.

WHAT sensible woman threatened with the loss of her job for incompetence would not trawl through her mind for recollections of those moments when she might have felt slighted or, now you mention it, sexually harassed and discriminated against?

It may not have felt that way at the time but, on reflection, it might not be difficult to reinterpret the odd careless remark or overheard joke as deeply hurtful and disturbing and symptomatic of a culture that discriminates against women. These recovered memories would be unlikely to restore an employee’s job security but they should ensure rather more favourable terms of departure.

The stream of sexual discrimination and harassment cases running through the courts recently has cost City firms many millions of pounds and, no doubt, persuaded more women to recall the indignities they have endured in the workplace. In the end, however, I fear that they may do little for the cause of ambitious women.

Organisations would not admit it, but there is a risk that these cases will make them increasingly wary of hiring women. One City firm of brokers admits that, whereas a few years ago around a quarter of its staff were women, today the number is tiny. No edict has gone out from the chief executive but managers themselves have, apparently, decided that they would rather play safe. It must be said that theirs is not the most refined working environment: the language can be ripe and the sense of humour not always subtle. The managers are not concerned that the women they might wish to employ would be offended by this so much as that they could find themselves faced with paying heavily for ridding themselves of women who have not been successful in their roles.

Adopting such a misogynist approach brings the added bonus of not having to cope with the difficulties of maternity leave, and then dutifully considering the requests for part-time work that increasingly follow it. Family-friendly this may be but, despite the Government’s continued insistence that such things are also good for business, not every company is convinced.

That women should receive equal pay for equal work is blindingly obvious. Some of the recent City cases have aired genuine grievances on this front. It may be hard to imagine why any investment analyst should receive a bonus of £650,000, but if the men are receiving rewards on that scale and a comparably rated woman receives just £25,000, she might rightly feel aggrieved. That view prevailed with the court and cost Schroder Securities £1.4 million. But Nomura feels that paying a lower bonus to someone who has been away a lot during her pregnancy than to her male colleagues who have been at work all the time does not amount to discrimination and is continuing to fight the claim. There will be many men, and childless women, who will agree with the bank, even if they do not feel brave enough to say so.

Careless talk can carry heavy bills, as Merrill Lynch found out recently when Elizabeth Weston, a solicitor, collected £1 million from them after a colleague had made lewd remarks to her at an office Christmas party. A slap on the face would have been well deserved and probably more embarrassing for him but not as lucrative for her.

Lewd behaviour in the workplace should not be tolerated, but getting drunk at Christmas parties and saying stupid things has been part of corporate culture for generations and women have probably indulged in it as much as men. The new puritanism that is stalking the corridors in the name of equal opportunities is as deadening as other varieties of political correctness.

One chairman of a medium-size City firm told me that his attempts to be chatty with his staff had had him hauled before his own human resources department on four separate occasions. The one that infuriated him most occurred on February 14. When a secretary joined him in the lift he inquired as to how many Valentine cards she had received. When she said “only one”, he asked her whether it had come from her husband or her lover. He meant to be funny but she, unamused, went straight to the HR department.

In the United States, no one on Wall Street would have dreamt of making such an attempt at humour, such is the climate that now prevails. Accused by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission of discriminating against women, Morgan Stanley this week agreed a $54 million settlement. Wall Street’s finest, battered by Elliott Spitzer, the New York Attorney-General, into paying huge settlements over their investment banking misdemeanours, have learnt to give in gracefully.

Nevertheless, it does seem extraordinary that Morgan Stanley should be willing to set up a $40 million claim fund for women who believe that they have been victims of discrimination, on top of the compensation it is paying to the woman who led the claim.

It may have been that some of the bank staff took clients to strip clubs and some women were unhappy about being excluded from “bonding” on trips to the golf course. But investment bankers do not succeed by being retiring wallflowers. They have to be tough and they have to be pushy and, if they play golf, they will be good enough to ensure that they win without resorting to tears or the courts.