Policy paper

Women in Finance Charter Treasury’s update 2021/22

Published 19 December 2022

This was published under the 2022 to 2024 Sunak Conservative government

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. On gender specifically, we have good representation at senior grades.

Priorities

Gender Pay Gap

In July 2021, the Cabinet Office published the annual Gender Pay Gap statistics covering the 2020/21 financial year for HM 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 (including analysis of the figures and an action plan). The Treasury’s report was published in January 2022.

The gender pay gap is different to equal pay. Equal pay deals with the pay differences between men and women who carry out the same jobs, 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. While 60% of the Treasury’s Executive Management Board positions 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 E and E2. Our gender pay gap action plan encompasses activities such as supporting women to access allowances they are entitled to and ensuring career progression opportunities are highlighted when our women are on maternity and career breaks.

We published our 2022 pay gap report in November.

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.

One of our key priorities is engaging with women at the Treasury on bullying, harassment and discrimination with the aim of strengthening our work to promote reporting and building a more inclusive culture.

We will also ensure bulk recruitment drives achieve equal representation of women, including in our Graduate Development Programme (GDP). We work closely with our networks, engaging them about our assessments throughout the campaign to ensure we understand the impacts and address these. In addition, we also consider adverse impact at every stage in the process before defining benchmarks, to ensure we are not setting a benchmark which disproportionately rejects different characteristics. In 2021 57% of women passed.

Senior support

Our Board level champion for women 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 in addition to tailored events.

Targets

The Treasury is making good progress and is at 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 50% as at March 2022 and we aim to continue our 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.