MPs back charter for women in business

MPs have backed a call from the Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) to extent the ‘Women in Finance Charter’ to cover all businesses in the UK to help bring more women in finance into leadership roles in other sectors.

Under the proposal, the existing ‘Women In Finance Charter’, which was launched in 2016, would be renamed to the ‘Charter for Women in Business’ and businesses from any sector, would be able to join the 300 financial services firms that have signed up to it.

The charter asks financial services firms to commit to implement four key industry actions to encourage diversity including naming a senior executive responsible and accountable for gender diversity and inclusion and setting internal targets for gender diversity in senior management positions.

In addition, the charter asks for firms to publish progress annually and to ensure the pay of the senior executive team is linked to delivery against these internal targets on gender diversity.

This move comes as a recent survey from YouGov, commissioned by AAT, found that 54 percent of MPs would support a change to incorporate all sectors of the economy, with only 15 percent of MPs stating that they do not support such a change, while 9 percent don’t know either way.

Association of Accounting Technicians head of policy and public affairs, Phil Hall, said in a statement: “AAT was the first, and for a long time the only, professional accountancy body to sign the Women in Finance Charter, because it knows closing the gap leads to a more diverse and creative workforce, broadens the skills base and can increase creativity and innovation – to say nothing of the obvious issue of fairness and the financial imperative for change.

“However, AAT believes that much more could be done. Huge numbers of businesses, large and small, could improve their awareness and understanding of what needs to be done and make necessary changes, if the Charter was widened to include all sectors of the economy.”

Hall added: “It’s pleasing that most MPs support such a change and we look forward to working them to try and achieve this in 2019.”