Season 7, Episode 7: International Women’s Day special: How to ensure diversity and inclusion initiatives deliver meaningful outcomes

This special episode of Compliance Clarified was recorded for International Women’s Day. Rachel Wolcott and Lindsey Rogerson, both senior editors at Regulatory Intelligence in London, are joined by Dr Louise Ashley of Queen Mary University’s London School of Business and Management and Centre for Research on Equality and Diversity.

Louise has spent a decade researching social inclusion in the City of London. Her book Highly Discriminating: Why the City Isn't Fair and Diversity Doesn't Work is based on interviews with more than 400 city leaders and workers was published last year.

She was a working group member of the City of London Corporation Taskforce on Socioeconomic Diversity and
led research for the government's Social Mobility Commission.

City firms have been trumpeting their diversity and inclusion programmes, but in this episode, we look at what is actually happening. What Dr Ashley illustrates in her work, is a complex situation where D&I programmes have achieved some incremental change, but at a cost to individuals. To "make it" women and individuals from ethnic minority and lower socio-economic backgrounds must assimilate to the prevailing financial services culture, which is white, middle-class, and male. D&I programmes have been sanitised politically and co-opted to serve City firms' reputational and marketing needs. Regulators should take another look at these programmes with a more critical eye, she argues.

Programme notes:

Louise Ashley's article for The Conversation can be found here: https://theconversation.com/class-and-the-city-of-london-my-decade-of-research-shows-why-elitism-is-endemic-and-top-firms-dont-really-care-199474

Link to Highly Discriminating: Why the City Isn't Fair and Diversity Doesn't Work, by Louise Ashley
https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/highly-discriminating

Lindsey’s article
Employment tribunal orders BNP Paribas to carry out equal pay audit, after £2 million judgment
http://go-ri.tr.com/K30qUZ

Rachel & Lindsey’s article
UK regulators plan pilot diversity
data collection, regular reporting to follow
http://go-ri.tr.com/sRJpVd

Compliance Clarified is a podcast from Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence.
Listen to wide-ranging, insightful discussions on all things compliance for financial services firms. We delve into the hot topics of the day, the challenges faced and offer up practical ideas for emerging good practice. We de-mystify regulation and explore the art, as well as the science, of the ever-expanding role of the compliance officer.  Enforcements, digital transformation, regulatory change, governance, culture, conduct risk – anything and everything impacting the compliance function is up for discussion.