Investment banks: misogynists or metrosexuals?

Yesterday was International Women's Day, making it as good a time as ever to look at whether international banks are treating women as they should.

"It's still very challenging for women in investment banks," says Kate Grussing, ex-JP Morgan banker turned managing director of Sapphire Partners, an organisation that helps enable senior women to work flexibly. "But the best banks recognize that they need to put effort into changing that."

What are the challenges? Grussing lists three: a dearth of senior role models, an incredibly demanding work schedule, and an aggressive culture not suited to all women.

Separately, two factors appear to substantiate the notion that banks have a way to go: the seemingly unstoppable flow of City-focused sex discrimination cases, and data confirming that men earn more - a recent report by the Greater London Authority, said men are paid 23% more than women in London. For the highest paid jobs, the differential rises to 32%.

Europeans lag Americans

One female trader, who quit a European bank to set up as a consultant, says European banks treat their women far worse than US banks do. "One or two European banks in particular have an appalling attitude," she says. "They're really not at all interested in helping women back to work or offering them the opportunity to work flexibly."

If you don't ask, you won't get

More broadly, she says female bankers may be partially to blame for their relative penury: "It's not that banks are malicious and want to pay women less. It's more about the fact that women rarely ask for more money.

"That gets exacerbated because once you're paid less one year, you'll get a smaller rise the next - the differential grows exponentially."