City Not So Glad to be Gay

• Fewer employees in the City prepared to identify themselves as gay
• Credit crunch paranoia and the change in focus of the discrimination agenda (to age) blamed
• But good news for women who are less reluctant to identify themselves as lesbians than 12 months ago

A year after Lord Brown drowned under headlines such as “BP CHIEF QUITS IN RENT BOY SCANDAL,” the third annual survey of City attitudes to homosexuality shows that candidates may be nervous of "coming out" because of the credit crunch.

The government estimates that 6% of the UK population is lesbian or gay. London’s gay population is nearer 10%, thanks to the thriving gay scene. Financial services recruiter Joslin Rowe registered 13,494 candidates for City roles over the last 3 years and collated anonymous diversity monitoring forms . In 06/07, 8% of respondents anonymously identified themselves as gay or lesbian, but this fell to 7% in 07/08. These figures indicate that out of the 900,000 people working in banking, finance, and insurance in London, 66,600 are gay or lesbian. Were the figures for financial services job candidates to be extrapolated out to London as a whole they would suggest there are now 23,400 fewer gay, lesbian or bisexual employees in the industry compared to the mix in London’s general population. In 2006, there were only 16,000 fewer gay, lesbian, and bisexual employees in the industry. The apparent “gay gap” is widening. In addition, each year we've carried out our research the number of completed diversity monitoring forms has risen (3,260 in 05/06, 4,011 in 06/07 and 6,223 in 07/08)- yet despite this, the percentage of LGB workers dropped in 07/08.

Tara Ricks, Managing Director of Joslin Rowe Associates said: ‘The City was moving away from its traditional image of white, heterosexual and male – which puts off many gay and lesbian applicants. And, as a result, the proportion of gay and lesbian workers happy to identify their sexuality began to increase. But it looks as though progress has stalled for some reason.”

Joslin Rowe blames the change in candidates’ attitude on the new climate in the City bought on by the credit crunch. Tara Ricks said: “Two important things have happened. We suspect some people don’t feel secure enough to identify themselves as gay at the moment, even anonymously. This fits with our analysis of the impact age has on City workers' willingness to identify themselves as gay."

Of men who identified themselves as gay, 40.6% were under 30 whilst 59.4% were over 30. Tara Ricks said: “More of the older generation are happy to identify themselves as gay - once City workers reach a certain level in an organisation, they feel confident enough to do so. But fewer young gay people appear prepared to identify themselves as such. Perhaps the credit crunch has made people feel less secure – hence the falling numbers.”

Tara Ricks said: “The second thing that has happened is age discrimination legislation. We don’t think the widening of the ‘gay gap’ is just about candidates, it’s also the result of a change of focus within City institutions. Employers have turned their attention to age discrimination laws and the issue of sexuality has become less important. Arguably, the fact that sexuality is no longer seen as an issue that needs to be focused on might not be such a bad thing.”

In Joslin Rowe’s research, women in the City were more likely to identify themselves as gay in 07/08 than in 06/07 – up from 0.16% to 0.19%. Nonetheless, women in the City are far less likely to identify themselves than men (even anonymously) as homosexual. Tara Ricks said: “The City is still a challenging and competitive place to work. The fact that so many women are so reluctant to come out as lesbians may well reflect the fact that women already feel they have to fight hard to maintain equality with men. But at least this is an area where progress is still being made.” “Of course there's no reason why people should disclose their sexuality at work - it is totally irrelevant to their ability to do the job. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t be counting anyone. But these are not exercises designed to label people. They have been created as positive tools to measure and encourage progress - rather than relying on mere compliance to drive change.”