Goodness knows why the press is up in arms about the BBC’s endemic cultural inequality. Accountants are far better at keeping the girlies down.
As a quick reminder, around 35% of the BBC’s top 100 staff are female. Going a little deeper, just over 10% come from ethnic minorities.
If you look at the statistics in the most recent Accountancy Age Top 50, the profession could slaughter the BBC on both measures.
With the exception of Frank Hirth at number 30, which has genuine gender equality amongst its 18 partners, not one of the top 40 has a higher proportion of partners than the BBC’s 35%. Unfortunately, while Frank Hirth is a shining beacon on that measure, it does not have a single partner from an ethnic minority.
However, on that measure, accountants go slightly better, since two firms are ahead of the BBC, although an embarrassing number do not even register.
I would wager that if we looked a little more closely at the statistics, things would look even worse. Certainly amongst the top 10 firms, while the percentage of female partners ranges between 13% and 20%, if you took the leading 100 at each practice, there would be an even greater predominance of female salaried partners and the top honours would show a much higher proportion of men than the overall figures.
As suggested above, finding significant numbers of partners from ethnic minorities at many firms would be akin to looking for non-existent needles in very large haystacks.
Do we care? My guess is, hand on heart, most accountants couldn’t care less about equality, unless it harms their businesses. You might say that half the community would feel strongly about this, being female but then again, only about 15% of them even make it into the game.
Perhaps it is time for somebody to do a BBC on the profession. That is the only way in which we might see change in the foreseeable future. Amusingly, PwC in presenting some carefully selected statistics about the top quartile, which is still performing little better than the BBC, expects to close the gender pay gap as soon as 2041, while Deloitte is less ambitious targeting 2069 for the big day.
For those that are not of a mathematical bent, i.e. non-accountants reading this article, that is 52 years away meaning that no current female employee is likely to enjoy the big day. If by any chance any of them does hang around long enough, they will be very old and tired.
In the meantime, let’s all dig our heads even deeper into the sand and lampoon the BBC, poor old Chris Evans (more old than poor to be fair) and all of the women who in the fullness of time might climb a little further up the ladder.
In the short term though, as the BBC have suggested, they can expect most of the highly paid men to be bought out by the competition now that the figures have been revealed, which should help the statistics.