GUEST COMMENT: Female investment bankers are NOT discriminated against

Nicola Pease has said the unthinkable: the City is less sexist than it used to be and women's careers in financial services are being wrecked, not by chauvinistic men in braces, but by excessive maternity leave and huge discrimination claims. If there are few senior women in the City she also points out that this is a matter of choice: women decide that financial services careers are incompatible with family life.

To any dyed in the wool City-discrimination-obsessive, this is heresy. It also contradicts a recent report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which suggested the City is a hotbed of discrimination and that men's bonuses are five times larger than women's.

I am inclined to agree with Nicola.

While it is both depressing and completely true that women are paid less, given fewer opportunities and are far more likely to be in part time employment, investment banking is one of very few sectors of the economy in which this disparity is less absolute.

I know lots of men who earn less than me

In over ten years in the industry, I have never felt discriminated against because of my gender. This applies equally to my experiences day to day as it does to my base or discretionary pay.

I know lots of men who earn more than me and many who earn less. I have been a line manager in a mainly male department; I have worked in banking as a single, married and divorced woman originally without and now with children. Overall, I think the opportunities made available to me and my female colleagues have been offered on merit (unlike in many areas of commerce) and that the pay offered has related to the job and not to our gender. The ability to accept and make a success of what is available is where the differences need to be addressed, both in banking and in the wider world.

The bottom line is that men have it easier. Their ambition is socially acceptable and there is considerably less pressure on them to stay at home and look after the children. They are also more assertive when it comes to pay and bonus negotiations, fully able to talk up their various achievements and, perhaps most significantly, many of them have extremely supportive wives, (some working, many not) who provide a wide variety of home administration, food, cleaning and childcare services.

You can stamp your feet, or you can perform

Social change tends to happen slowly. What is acceptable now is different to what was acceptable 50 years ago and, hopefully, from what will be acceptable in 50 years' time.

If some men find it hard to relate to women in the workplace, especially women in senior roles, because they have not had enough exposure to career-minded women then we have a choice. We can choose to stamp our feet and complain about the difficulties we face or, those of us who are fortunate to work in an industry which generally operates as a meritocracy, can take the opportunities offered and get on with it. We can focus on demonstrating our effectiveness by doing our jobs well and providing the working examples that will mean fewer and fewer people haven't been exposed to a female peer or even a female boss.

True equality is about access equal access to choice and opportunity. It's about the ability to prove yourself to be good as, if not better than, the next man (because it will be a man). The world we work in is not perfect, but it is better than many and gives us the opportunity to drive wider change leading by example. Nicola is one such example. The presence of senior female role models is likely to be more effective and longer lasting than the outcome to any survey- however well meaning.