Women on European Boards Earn Less Despite Rising Representation

• In Europe, the average pay for female board members represents 62% of the average payment for males in 2024, according to Omar Ali of EY.
• The equality index of North America is 94%, while the difference for the world is 22%, which differs according to the ages of the people.

The gender pay gap among boardroom directors at European financial servicing companies has reached a six-year high, despite the continued increase in women representation, as reported by EY.

According to information by the consultancy firm for 2024, the compensation for female non-executive board members in banks, insurers, and asset managers in the European Union was just 62% as compared to that given to their male counterparts, representing the largest gap since EY began collecting the information in 2019. The number of female board members, however, increased to 41% in 2024 compared to 35% in 2020.

Regional disparities did exist. For North America, women earned 94% of what men made, which remained unchanged from the previous year’s ratio. Women represented 38% of non-executives in North America, an increase of six percentage points from 2020.

Internationally, the difference is still there, because the average salary of the board members who are female is $252,672 compared to the male members, which is $325,402 in 2024.

EY global financial services leader Omar Ali said, “The widening gender pay gap in Europe’s largest financial firms is a stark reminder that greater representation does not directly translate into pay parity.”

Payments gap regarding the presence of age disparities emerged, whereby the 70+ directors earned a premium of 24% in Europe, 43% in the Asia Pacific region, and 8% in the US and Canada. According to Ali, “While experience is always valued, younger talent with technology expertise are increasingly imperative.”

Advocacy research carried out in London by organization 25X25 brings into focus that in the region, despite half of the board directors of related technological expertise being women, technological expertise helps in augmenting the number of women as board members and also in providing them with equal pay.

This emphasizes the fact that in spite of an increasing number of women, an improvement in the parity of benefits for the financial sector has not yet been realized.