The Hindu Business Line : Where the male continues to rule

While one boss referred to a female colleague as a `tethered goat', meaning a sexual bait, another had the audacity to say, she `had cancer, been a pain and is now pregnant.'

That women have made it right to the topmost level in the corporate world is evident from the fact that right from 1998 Fortune magazine has been coming out with its annual surveys on the power pack of 50 women in business. This shows that even while existing perennially for most women, the glass ceiling is being battered now and then by at least some of them.

But the troubling factor is that whether one is an anonymous peg in a huge industry, or holding a top job in the world of financial services, gender discrimination and sexual harassment just refuse to go away.

There is constant reminder of this — the latest being the December issue of Bloomberg Markets. Its cover story outlines the discrimination and harassment some of the most qualified and talented women are facing in London's financial hub, referred to as the `City'.

Titled Sexism and the City - Women fight back in London's financial hub, the article details the amazing stories of brave and determined women who are hitting back at their employers by suing the firms that have denied them promotions or adequate salaries and bonus, compared to their male colleagues.

The most preposterous story is that of Carina Coleman, whose boss and founder of the investment bank Lansdowne Capital Ltd kept referring to her as a "tethered goat'. We are told her boss began using the phrase after watching the film Jurassic Park, where a goat tied to a stake was used to lure dinosaurs. When he used the term the third time, and in front of clients, where the reference pertained to using her as sexual bait in some merger, she realised it was the beginning of a campaign against sexual harassment, and the whole thing ended with the woman being forced to resign in August 2001. A few days later she filed a suit for sexual harassment.

Says the article, "More women in London's City are standing up to treatment they say is unfair, sexist and nasty," adding that 8128 women in the UK had filed sex discrimination claims in 2002-2003, compared to 4,926 in the financial year 2000. "As the cases have increased, so have payments to settle them. The biggest publicly disclosed award was the £1.4 million ($2.3 million) an employment tribunal ordered Schoder Securities to pay Julie Bower, a beverage industry analyst, last year for unfair dismissal and sex discrimination. Bower's boss had said she had `had cancer, been a pain and is now pregnant'."

The magazine quoted Patricia Hewitt, the British Trade and Industry Secretary, saying, "Although a lot has changed, women can still face discrimination in the City. I have concerns about the lack of transparency and objectivity surrounding some employers' decisions on bonuses. We know that this can sometimes lead to men and women being rewarded unequally."

Sounds familiar? One is sure it does, to hundreds of women who have crawled their way up several layers of the glass ceiling in corporate India too. Unlike Wall Street or London's City, our financial district in Mumbai has not reported too many, if any, legal complaints of gender discrimination in the world of finance and investment. That must be because women are still trying to get a foothold in this magic world.

Fortune magazine's latest pack of 50 international power women might have two Indians — Vidya Chhabria, Chairperson of the Jumbo Group and Naina Lal Kidwai, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director of HSBC Securities and Capital Markets, Mumbai, at the 38th and 47th positions respectively.

But in this coveted world women are as yet newcomers. Those who have made it are still trying to feel their way around and one doubts that there are too many brave souls out there who would want to jeopardise their careers by challenging their bosses on grounds of discrimination in pay or promotions, or downright sexual harassment.

The most talked about case of sexual harassment slapped on an Indian company pertained to Infosys Technologies, but even there the woman who complained was an Infosys employee in the US.

However, if you turn to Wall Street or the world's largest securities market, there are numerous cases of women seeking compensation for gender discrimination and sexual harassment. The most famous case is, of course, the one that is referred to as the "Boom Boom Room" case of 1996 in which 20 current and former employees of Smith Barney Inc. sprung a surprise on Wall Street by participating in a class action sexual harassment and discrimination suit. These women claimed that the male employees ran what they called a "boom boom room" in an office of the firm in Long Island, where the men indulged in bawdy behaviour "drank Bloody Marys from a barrel and routinely subjected women to lewd pranks." The company ended up paying millions of dollars after a protracted legal battle in which many skeletons rolled out of the cupboard.

Following the Smith Barney harassment case, a group of female brokers in Chicago filed a sex discrimination suit against Merrill Lynch. In a settlement announced in May, 1998, Merrill Lynch agreed to pay $5 million in legal fees as well as a total of $600,000 to the eight women who filed the suit.

The same company was once again in trouble when a former employee of its Massachusetts office filed another suit on sexual harassment. The plaintiff, Susan Rosenberg, alleged that she was fired because of her age and gender and that at one point a supervisor had handed her a vibrator when she went into his office.

All this was only the tip of the iceberg and since then the "Boom Boom Room" case has become a kind of catchword for sexual harassment on Wall Street. According to a report dated December 20, 2003, on arkansasnews.com, currently there are at least a dozen class action claims concerning gender discrimination on Wall Street, "involving such venerable names as Goldman Sachs, ING Barings, J.P. Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Salomon Smith Barney."

A study done in 2001 by Catalyst, a research and advisory organisation for women, found that the majority of women working in the financial services industry are happy with their jobs and employers, but believe subtle discriminatory behaviour and practices do exist.

The study titled Women in Financial Services: The Word on the Street, conducted in response to a gender-discrimination trial, surveyed 838 women and men employed at seven leading securities firms. Of the 482 women surveyed, five per cent said they have to work harder than men to get the same rewards, 51 per cent said they get paid less than men who do similar work, 42 per cent believed that projects or clients are assigned fairly and only 32 per cent thought promotions are handed out fairly to men and women.

Interestingly, and predictably, the majority of the men surveyed didn't see things the same way. They saw only two barriers to a woman's advancement in her career — commitment to family and lack of management experience. How boringly predictable!

But despite the discrimination they faced, the women said they would not quit, and rightly so. Sixty-one per cent of the women surveyed said departing Wall Street would be a financial blunder for them.

And why should they leave? As Sheila Wellington, the president of Catalyst says, "Few industries evoke more images of power and prestige than the financial services industry."

Response can be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in

Illustration by Ravikanth Nandula

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