Closing The Finance Gap Requires Some Uncomfortable Conversations

LinkedIn and CNBC joined forces to provide us with feedback from 1,000 LinkedIn members in various financial industries and one of the stats struck me as interesting because it’s yet another example of the intricacies of diversity programs.

74% of men and 47% of women agree that men and women are promoted at an equal rate.

Why do nearly 50% of women agree that men and women are promoted at an equal rate in an industry that has traditionally been male dominated and continues to be so?

When I worked in financial services at a Fortune 100 company, the number of female managers overall was low and I was the only black female manager on the West Coast. The fact that 47% of women agree that men and women are promoted at an equal rate in financial services makes me wonder whether race was taken into account.

Why bring race into it? Because of two additional stats that are too important to ignore. First, equal pay is not equal and second, the pay gap between people of color and their white counterparts is widening according to the Economic Policy Institute. An article from CNN Money and economic research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco indicate that what is driving the wage is affected by “discrimination…and growing earnings inequality in general”, not skill, education or work experience and that is troubling.

Does anyone remember the Supreme Court decision that narrowly upheld affirmative action at the beginning of 2016? Fisher v. Texas was the case of a young white woman, Abigail Fisher, who sued to attend a college she claimed denied her acceptance because she was white. She believed affirmative action limited her success based upon her race.

Abigail Fisher isn’t alone. Did you know that 67 percent of young white women are against affirmative action according to the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study?

I wonder if the 47% of women in the LinkedIn/CNBC survey who believe that men and women are promoted at an equal rate are the same women who are somewhat or strongly opposed to affirmative action while simultaneously benefiting from it. This is an important question because the fact that affirmative action programs have been disproportionately beneficial to white women while those same white women object to affirmative action programs is reflected in the backlash against diversity programs in corporate America.

We question the need for diversity programs and look for reasons to dismantle them while blaming the people who are supposed to benefit from these programs of practicing exclusion and being divisive, all the while quietly using those programs to benefit the very people who say we don’t need them. [As the author of this blog post, I'm going to hear this exact criticism.]

As an advocate for equality at work, I see diversity programs as a conduit to closing these gaps and increasing awareness not just in the finance industry, but across all industries. But if diversity programs aren’t the answer, what is?

Diversity practitioners excel at being comfortable conveying the uncomfortable and these stats show it’s time to have a few more uncomfortable conversations across our workplaces if we ever expect to close the finance gap or the pay gap.

#TheFinanceGap #PayEquity #EqualPay #Diversity #ReworkWork #WomenAtWork #ClosingTheGap

Stacey A. Gordon, MBA is Founder of Rework Work and a LinkedIn Learning Author. Working to bring equality in career opportunities to the workplace and improve hiring practices, you can view her courses on diversity recruiting, unconscious bias, making a career change and resumes. Follow her on Twitter or visit her company website or LinkedIn page for more information.