Sex equality in the financial services sector in Turkey and the UK

Abstract

In the UK and other western countries the financial services sector is seen as offering women better career prospects than most other sectors. Unprecedented numbers of well‐qualified young women are now achieving promotion to first‐line and middle management positions. Companies are represented as progressive employers, committed to promoting equal opportunities. However, a cross‐cultural study of three Turkish and six UK banks and high street financial organisations explores how organisational ideologies and cultures operate to perpetuate inequality, based on managers’ gendered conceptions of “the ideal worker”. Favoured staff were identified, sponsored, promoted and rewarded, often based on their personal affinity with senior managers rather than objective criteria. This distinction between favour and exclusion operates not only along the traditional lines of gender, class, age, sexual orientation, religion and physical ability, but also along the new dimensions of marriage, networking, safety, mobility and space. Despite local and cross‐cultural differences in the significance of these factors, the cumulative disadvantage suffered by women managers and supervisors in both countries was remarkably similar.