Betty Buyside: City bonuses....as transparent as choosing a Pope

My morning sickness hasn't disappeared even though I am almost four months pregnant. But at least I haven't had to reveal my condition to anyone at work yet.

My trusty M&S elasticised waist has expanded comfortably without anyone noticing and it helps that I wasn't exactly rake thin in the first place.

I am convinced that owning up to my pregnancy before my bonus is declared is tantamount to setting fire to an enormous pile of 20 notes, so much do people doubt the commitment of working mothers.

Mind you, if they did discriminate and I thought I could prove it, I could always sue.

Industrial tribunals seem to be busy places these days. Reading the national press, let alone the specialist financial press, it seems to me that now that markets have collapsed and the gravy train has run out of steam, the only way to get a big pay day is to claim that you've been paid much worse than the chap sitting next to you who is doing the same or even not as good a job.

Of course this is rather time consuming, so I am not sure it is worth it. Julie Bower, for instance, would never have struggled all the way through two tribunals (the first didn't allocate enough time to hear all the witnesses) to see any of the massive award she got (1.4m), if the Equal Opportunities Commission hadn't taken on her case.

Mary Walsh, remember her? She's the girl who lost her job at Barings after the Nick Leeson fiasco and then sued for her bonus, which had been verbally awarded to her a few days before the crisis struck. She lost, and it was a long, hard grind to find this disappointing fact out.

Of course there are two key observations to make about pay inequality in the City. The first is that all these cases always seem to happen on the sellside. I can't believe that this is any coincidence, and it is of course why I moved from the sell to the buyside myself.

Women have always had a better time on the buyside; think of people like Carol Galley, Nicola Horlick, Katherine Garrett-Cox. Now name me one woman on the sellside in charge of equities. See what I mean?

Of course there is no chance of me ever being able to advance much at my firm, but I might as well sit it out, collect the maternity leave and then move on.

No chance of me giving up work for a while, either, as Anthony Academic never seems destined to have the kind of pay packet that would let me stay at home and have a full-time nanny.

The other observation about all these equal pay cases is that they are missing the real point. The two most inequitable things about pay for anyone, male or female, working in the City are the lack of transparency and objectivity in the bonus award process, and the fact that disloyalty to one's employer is so highly rewarded.

These two factors, much more than any sex discrimination, are the real reason for the enormous disparity between the compensation received by men and women in the City.

On the sellside especially, the bonus award process is something akin to choosing a new Pope.

Towards the end of the financial year, senior managers go into a huddle to pore over bonus spreadsheets. These spreadsheets then go backwards and forwards between the managers and their managers, with reductions asked for regularly.

They never reward effort and achievement; they reward those who have guarantees because they have to, followed next by those they think they can't afford to lose (almost always men, as they are unlikely to disappear to bring up children).

I intend to be thought of as business critical, and my bosses might not view me that way if they knew I was pregnant.

Still, I'm saving a fortune on Tampax and alcohol, as they no longer feature high up my list of consumables. So maybe it doesn't matter if my bonus isn't all it should be.

You can contact Betty at: bettybuyside@efinancialcareers.com