Policy paper

Women in Finance Charter Treasury’s update 2022/2023

Published 15 December 2023

This was published under the 2022 to 2024 Sunak Conservative government

HM Treasury is a signatory to the Women in Finance Charter and is publishing the following update on progress.

Overview:

The Treasury is committed to building a department that reflects and understands the citizens we serve. Our people are drawn from a rich mix of backgrounds, skills and expertise. This enables us to draw on the widest possible evidence, experiences and perspectives in order to better understand and resolve problems, effectively advise our ministers, strengthen our policy making, and maintain robust corporate functions.

We support everyone to thrive and belong here; therefore, all talents are embraced, valued and successes celebrated, ensuring everyone feels empowered to perform in our jobs to the best of our ability and in different ways.

Priorities:

Gender Pay Gap:

The gender pay gap shows the difference between the average pay between all men and women in a workforce. This is different to equal pay which deals with pay difference between men and women who have same job, similar jobs or work of equal value. The gender pay gap compares the mean and median pay and bonuses for all men and women. This means it is heavily influenced by the representation of women at different grades.

As part of our 2022 Gender Pay Gap Report we committed to taking forward a long term action plan that identified key pay and non-pay actions to help us to reduce our pay gap. The plan supports actions on recruitment & retention and learning and development to support the representation and progression of women at higher grades; pay and allowances by reviewing policies and making them more visible to empower and encourage more women to apply for them; improving our tracking, monitoring, and reporting of the gender distribution across pay awards and bonuses to identify and reduce disparities.

In July this year the Cabinet Office published the annual 2023 Annual Civil Service Statistics for Treasury core and four of its executive agencies: Government Internal Audit Agency (GIAA); Debt Management Office (DMO); the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC); and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). Departments have since published their full reports (which includes the analysis of the figures and progress against the action plan). The Treasury’s report was published in November 2023 which shows positive progress with our core departments mean pay gap reducing from 6.5% to 3.3%, and the median pay gap reducing from 18% to 7.9%. 

While 8 out of 13 roles on the Treasury’s Executive Management Board are held by women, we continue to have imbalances at more junior grades where there are greater numbers of staff – women are over- represented at grades B-C and under-represented at grades D and E.

Support: 

Our aim is to improve and maintain the representation of women in finance, particularly for the pipeline into the Senior Civil Service (SCS) and supporting women returning to work after career breaks and/or maternity leave.  This will ensure that those away from work have access to the same opportunities for progression.

Our Board level champion for Gender in the Treasury demonstrates our commitment at senior level and plays an important role in progressing and supporting the changes we would like to see on gender equality and demonstrating our commitment to creating a thriving culture for all colleagues. We will be continuing with our new buddying and mentoring scheme for women returning to work after a time away. We will also continue offering career development opportunities for women, including looking at how we support women out of the department on maternity leave/ career breaks to develop their careers and achieve their potential.  

Project on Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination

We are running a project to take positive action on Bullying, Harassment, and Discrimination. The project covers a range of activities including launching our new Safeguarding policy, updating our policies and guidance and better understanding experiences of discrimination so we can design effective actions to promote reporting reporting and building a more inclusive culture.  

Targets:

The Treasury is making good progress towards its target of 50% of representation of women in the Senior Civil Service (SCS). When we signed up to the Charter in March 2016, we had 43% female representation in senior management, this has increased to 48.9% representation, and we continue to take action to build upon this progress. Over 60% of our Executive Management Board positions are held by women.

Treasury’s Women’s Network:

The Treasury’s work to improve gender equality is supported by a well-established Women in the Treasury Network made up of volunteers across the department at all grades. The Network aims to strengthen links between women in the Treasury and to both examine, and tackle, broader issues specific to women in our workplace. It provides a forum for women to be inspired by the experiences of other women, to benefit from a supportive community in which their concerns can be shared and to identify constructive responses to some of the issues that are raised. The Network runs a programme of awareness-raising events including events aimed at supporting Treasury women’s career progression, flexible working and hybrid working.