We will carry on the work of these City pioneers

IT IS an incredible feeling to mark the 50-year anniversary of women being admitted to the Stock Exchange.

The City has undergone paradigm shifts since 1973 and the financial services industry is more diverse than ever.

But it still irks me to this day that the LSE was not actually required to accept the positive case for women to be members, but rather it was given little choice when it merged with 11 others which had already invited them into the fold.

As the chief executive of the London Stock Exchange, I am fully aware of the need to continue the work started by the pioneering women we are honouring today to improve the participation and enfranchisement of women within financial services – both as people working in the industry and, just as importantly, as people receiving financial services.

As I’ve said before, we are truly standing on the shoulders of giants and we have a duty to pass the baton on to the next generation.

Whilst the stories of misogyny and laddishness have declined, they have not gone altogether. We are also still severely lacking in female role models in the industry. The latest data from the [Treasury-backed] Women in Finance Charter showed that average female representation in senior management was only 35 per cent. Whilst this has improved in recent years, more needs to be done; we can’t be complacent.

I must admit, I hate making the ‘business case’ for diversity and inclusion. I think we’re at the stage where the discussion should no longer be about why it’s important to have adequate representation of more than 50 per cent of the population in the City. We should instead be focusing our attention on what we actually need to change in order to make a difference for women.

If I have to make a business case however, I would make one simple point: diversity and inclusion is about giving everyone in the workplace an equal opportunity to thrive.

Setting up any industry to only allow a specific proportion of that industry to thrive is, simply put, rubbish resource management.

We conducted a study with the Centre for Economics and Business Research which found there has been a near three-fold growth in Gross Value Added [the value that producers have added to goods and services] to the UK economy by women in finance over the past 26 years.

This has contributed to a £1.12 trillion ‘gender diversity dividend’ to the UK economy since 1997 – by the incredible work of innovative, dynamic and dedicated women across the UK finance sector.

Interestingly, the growth is explained by an increase in women’s ability to participate and, as a result, their wages and productivity – leading to a higher value added per worker.

This should make every politician working to solve the UK’s productivity puzzle sit up and take note.

But it also illustrates how much value we were giving up by not including women sooner.