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Research Report on Sex Equality in the Financial Services Sector in Turkey and the UK
Introduction
The financial services sector has a reputation in many countries of providing ``safe'', socially acceptable white-collar employment for women. However, its record in terms of equal opportunities does not match this perception. he authors routine clerical posts formerly occupied by Organisational restructuring in the financial women obsolete (Crompton and Sanderson, services sector has taken advantage of infor1994; Halford et al., 1997). Although the mation technology to cut costs and to promote competitiveness by downsizing, making many proportion of women managers in UK banks Mustafa F. Ozbilgin is Lecturer in Human Resource È has risen considerably in recent years, these Management at the University of Hertfordshire Business posts have less authority and autonomy, and School, Hertford, UK. offer relatively lower salaries than formerly In the UK and other western countries the financial (Ashburner, 1988). Internationally, the most services sector is seen as offering women better career prestigious and lucrative positions in banks' prospects than most other sectors. Unprecedented boardrooms and the money markets are still numbers of well-qualified young women are now largely male preserves. The outcome of these achieving promotion to first-line and middle management restructuring processes is continued disadvanpositions. Companies are represented as progressive tage for women staff within the sector.
Research aims and methodology
This article draws on a study of sex equality in the financial services sector in Turkey and the
employers, committed to promoting equal opportunities. However, a cross-cultural study of three Turkish and six UK banks and high street financial organisations explores how organisational ideologies and cultures operate to perpetuate inequality, based on managers' gendered conceptions of ``the ideal worker''. Favoured staff were identified, sponsored, promoted and rewarded, often based on their personal affinity with senior managers rather than objective criteria. This distinction between favour and exclusion operates not only along the traditional lines of gender, class, age, sexual orientation, religion and physical ability, but also along the new dimensions of marriage, networking, safety, mobility and Electronic access The current issue and full text archive of this journal is space. Despite local and cross-cultural differences in the significance of these factors, the cumulative disadvantage suffered by women managers and supervisors in both countries was remarkably similar.
UK (Ozbilgin, 1998) which compared the È experiences of male and female staff , focusing on how organisational practices promote and sustain sex segregation. The fieldwork generated 45 taped interviews and 362 completed questionnaires provided by male and female staff at all levels from process workers to senior management, employed in the head offices and branches of major banks, building societies and insurance firms. This article focuses on issues of organisational culture, using the interview data to explore women informants' experiences of marginalisation and exclusion from oppor-
tunities for career advancement. The effects of these social processes are to perpetuate male privilege in employment in the sector, through the use of subtle, largely hidden means. The article concludes with a review of possible sources of pressure for change.
Women in the financial services sector in Turkey
The modern, secular Turkish state was founded in 1923 under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal 325
(known as Ataturk, or ``leader of the Turks''), È after an extended period of political upheaval following the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Significant legal and societal changes promoting the equality of the sexes were soon introduced, including the banning of polygamy, equal rights in matters of divorce and child custody, and women's right to vote. The prohibition of the head and full body covers for women, which had been potent symbols of political Islam in the Ottoman Empire, the introduction of secular education, and lifting the bans on women's employment, in both state and private organisations and companies, consolidated these gains. Ataturk's teachings and speeches had a È far-reaching impact on matters of sex equality, especially in relation to employment. His vision was to encourage Turkish women into all sectors of employment by removing the restrictions and barriers in their way. He pursued this by supporting the first wave of women profes- sionals in Turkey, such as doctors, pilots and educators, and promoting their visibility as role models in the Turkish media. These efforts had a strong nationalist and secular message, which contrasted strongly with the situation in other predominantly Muslim countries. However, although these changes certainly promoted the social status of a group of city-dwelling elite  women in Turkey, they did little for the vast majority of women, from the lower social and economic classes and in rural communities. Currently the notion of the secular state is under attack from Islamic groups, who enjoy widespread support, creating political instability. In connection with the nationalist movement in the early years of the century, 24 national banks were established between 1908 and 1923. Three more government-owned banks were subsequently established to finance the economic development of the new republic. They pursued a secular and nationalist ideology, in accordance with government policy, which promoted women's employment and provided career opportunities for them in the years to follow. More than 30 privately owned banks were established in the 1950s, a period of economic liberalisation. As a new industry, they were free from the traditional sex-typing of jobs, and began to provide large numbers of Turkish women in major cities with better than average employment opportunities, earning a reputation in so doing which persists to the present day. In the 1980s new liberal economic policies were pursued to promote the globalisation of
the financial services sector, which established a free-market economy and encouraged the integration of the Turkish economy into the world-wide economic community. Several reforms, such as the establishment of the stock market and the liberalisation of foreign trade, were undertaken during this period to increase the competitiveness of the Turkish financial services sector. These liberal policies also permitted the establishment of financial institutions which claim to be working in accordance with Islamic principles, following a model which originated from the Islamic countries of the Arab Peninsula and the Middle East. These institutions, which operate on a system of interest-free profit-sharing arrangements (because lending for interest is forbidden), have grown substantially in the last decade. They keep the enterprises for which they provide financial support under religious, as well as financial, scrutiny. They do not employ women, because of the system of religious beliefs on which they are founded, and they support an economy which promotes a minimum sex segregation, if not the total exclusion of women from the workplace and from business and industry. Although the financial services sector is small, employing only 2 per cent of the Turkish employed population in 1992 (DIE, 1994), they earn the highest average income of all sectors. Women comprised 31 per cent of its staff in 1992 (DIE, 1995). The stateowned banks and most commercial banks (except for the Islamic finance houses described above) now provide employment opportunities for women, and this sector is traditionally considered to offer ``secure'', ``prestigious'' and above-average career opportunities for women (Seyman, 1992). Newspaper articles frequently argue that women enjoy equal opportunities in the sector, and that it offers women ideal careers in terms of compatibility with their other roles (Atikkan, 1993; Gunaydin, 1997). There is a widely-held view that women, irrespective of their socio-economic, religious, and ethnic backgrounds, enjoy equal opportunities in banking. However, in practice Turkish financial institutions offer employment opportunities only to a minority of privileged employees, who are well-educated and willing to sustain a life-style and physical appearance that is considered acceptable. Thus, employment opportunities within the sector are skewed not only by gender, but also by other 326
socio-economic variables such as class, education, birthplace, ethnicity, age and physical appearance. Although no reliable statistics are available on the proportion of women in different occupations and at different levels of the hierarchy within the sector generally, data from the personnel archives of the large firms in this study suggest that women are underrepresented at the higher levels. Vertical and horizontal sex segregation is still prevalent (that is, women are concentrated in certain occupations within the sector and are largely absent from others, and disproportionately occupy posts at lower levels of the hierarchy). Women comprised 29 per cent of the managers in one firm studied, between 17 per cent (of senior management) and 51 per cent (of intermediate and junior management) in another, and between 10 per cent (of senior management) and 20 per cent (of intermediate and junior management) in a third company. Consistently, a lower proportion of women worked in head offices than in the less prestigious branches, and they were typically younger and better qualified than their male colleagues. One explanation is age-discrimination in companies' training and promotion policies, which affects women staff more than men (Ozbilgin, 1998). È As Turkey has no progressive legislation concerning sex equality to compare with the UK equal opportunities laws, several companies employ no women, justifying this by their ideological and traditional (generally Islamic) views. Thus sex equality in the sector is left to the devices of the market economy and the good intentions of employers.
satisfaction with ``jobs'' rather than ``careers'' which characterised the 1950s and 1960s. However, as late as 1986 women still constituted under 2 per cent of bank managers or senior departmental managers in the sector (Alston, 1987), supporting Ashburner's (1988) view that women were typically promoted within the clerical grades, but could not successfully challenge the maledominated composition of the managerial grades. With increasing numbers of qualified women entering the sector, firms were impelled to adopt legal minimum requirements of sex equality, after legislation was passed in the 1970s. However, Collinson (1987), in his study of the equal opportunities programmes of two banks in the UK, argued that the equal opportunities programmes implemented in the 1980s proved less effective than had been anticipated:
The initiatives of the major banks are unlikely to have a positive effect on the position of most female employees. The extension of recruitment tiering, severe restrictions on study leave, the retention of closed promotion procedures and the focusing of new schemes on a small elite  group of high potential women and men are all likely to reinforce the entrapment of most women in jobs rather than careers (Collinson, 1987, p. 20).
Women in the financial services sector in the UK
Since the 1950s UK financial institutions have faced strong competition in both their domestic and international markets. The distinction between the different types of financial companies, such as banks and building societies, was eroded under legislation which liberalised the financial markets (Humphries et al., 1992). The proportion of women acquiring financial service qualifications increased greatly during the 1970s and 1980s, indicating women's growing aspirations for career development, as opposed to their apparent
Griffin (1986) pointed out that office jobs were historically not a primary employment area for women, but rather provided employment opportunities for white middle class male clerks until the late 1870s, when the new technology of the typewriter rendered the administrative and writing skills of these men obsolete. Women were initially permitted to enter office jobs, not as the equals of men, but to undertake those jobs which men no longer wanted. Although these jobs did not offer the same high rewards to women as they formerly did to men, socially they were considered prestigious and ``secure'' jobs for young school-leaver girls for a few years prior to marriage or motherhood. Rudiments of these attitudes persisted into the 1980s. Based on her study of female bank clerks, Griffin (1986) asserts that jobs in the financial services sector are still considered ``ideal jobs for girls'' in the UK, as they are in Turkey. However, although they may now aspire to better training opportunities and higher managerial posts, women staff have come to realise that their prospects may not match their aspirations. The scope for career progression and training opportunities 327
continues to be limited for working class girls, showing that gendered organisational hierarchies coincide with class (also see Savage, 1993), race and age hierarchies:
All of the employees were white and middle class, with the exception of the younger working class woman in the production room. The branch operated according to a strict hierarchy, with the older middle class men in the most powerful senior positions. The manager, Mr Shaw, saw banking as an ``ideal job for a girl'', and boasted of the job security it could offer them (Griffin, 1986, p. 120).
Financial services is traditionally a male-dominated sector in the UK, but Shaw and Perrons (1995) argue that banking has been more progressive than most other sectors in its equal opportunities-related practices in recent years. Harker (1995) provides examples of such progressive practices in the provision of maternity leave, career break schemes and nursery places. However, these few examples of progressive policies mask widespread sex discrimination in the sector, and the current spate of mergers and company downsizing is likely to discourage investment in familyfriendly employment practices. The financial services industry is the second biggest employer of women full-time employed in the UK, after public administration, education and the health industry. However, the proportion of female staff in full-time employment in the sector has been declining steadily, from 53 per cent in 1980, to 42 per cent in 1994, when it provided employment to 1,400,000 men and 1,461,000 women. One-third of the women staff are parttimers (compared with one in 20 of the men), a proportion which has more than doubled since 1980 (EOC, 1994; 1995). The fundamental reason behind this casualisation of female labour was the widespread lack of adequate maternity and child-care provision, as well as technological change. Women in the financial services sector earn as little as 66.3 per cent of their male counterparts' weekly earnings as managers and as high as 83.6 per cent in the non-managerial grades (BIFU, 1991). Female part-timers' hourly earnings have fallen from 93 per cent of fulltime pay in 1980 to 80 per cent in 1988 (Humphries et al., 1992). Currently, sex discrimination in pay not only affects all women adversely, relative to men, but also affects different groups of women, such as part-timers, more than others. From the women's perspective, most banks' inadequate child-care provision and lack of family-friendly policies
may mean that remaining in full-time employment is almost impossible for those with children, except for those few who earn sufficiently high salaries to be able to purchase good quality private child care. Several recent studies (Ashburner, 1988; Crompton and Sanderson, 1994; Halford et al., 1997) have shown that organisational restructuring within this sector often involves gendered practices, through which men's careers and employment conditions are promoted and prioritised over women's. McInnes (1988) argued that before the late 1980s experience as a branch manager was seen as central to career progression in the sector. However, as this role has lost value in comparison with the experience of being employed in head offices, which offer a wider range of career alternatives, it has become feminised. Technological change has diminished the control and authority which branch managers enjoyed previously, as computerisation has taken decisions about financial lending and budgeting away from the branch managers, to the central authority (Crompton and Sanderson, 1994). Similarly, thousands of women in clerical grades face redundancy as routine transactions become handled by automatic electronic means.
Patterns of exclusion within organisational cultures
In both Turkey and the UK the senior managers, and hence organisational cultures, in the financial services sector are, as the preceding sections have indicated, overwhelmingly male. The stereotype of ``the ideal employee'' who is sought for recruitment and promotion therefore reflects the perceptions, beliefs, norms and prejudices of this male managerial elite. Â The necessarily brief account of gender inequalities which follows should not obscure the subtle distinctions which operate within selec- tion processes associated also with class, age, sexual orientation, religion and physical ability, but which in Turkey may cross-cut with marriage, social networks, safety and mobility, and spatial issues. Social networks were also significant in the UK firms, as the next section shows. In the UK the standardisation of recruitment, career development and promotion procedures in recent years has not prevented managers from continuing to select employees who share 328
their own characteristics, but paradoxically it has actually legitimised gendered employment practices by cloaking them in spurious ``objectivity''. Informants in both countries spoke of selecting ``the right person for the job'' and of the qualities sought in new staff, with the preferred profiles having a gender dimension which shifts according to the nature of the post. The Turkish financial services organisations typically portray a corporate image in their advertising which uses language such as dynamic, hard-working, reckless, quick, and young, qualities associated with maleness. One firm's staff recruitment literature features images of young men and women working out in a gym, using expensive equipment. The clear implicit messages conveyed are that young, cosmopolitan and urban, well-educated staff are sought, who are either male or are capable of working in accordance with male norms:
They accept people who adopt a certain behavioural mode. There are not many people from different places here (Male senior manager).
lot of noise, wear sleek suits. They are very much men's men. They are all cricket, Porsche types. The executives do like pushy, showy people (Female senior supervisor). It's a joke in Company X. ``You've got a problem if you are not a man, because you can't play cricket, so you can't get on'' (Female senior supervisor).
Although cricket is played by some women in the UK, it receives very little media attention (although the England women's team was recently world champions) and cricket is never played in mixed teams. Weekend amateur games typically last several hours, which causes conflict in families as mothers are expected to subordinate their own leisure activities to those of their male partners by providing child care and tea for the teams. In one UK finance company, the women staff had their own networks based on sport, but as this was netball, an exclusively female and low-status sport, it offered less opportunity for networking with senior managers because so few managers were women, compared with the benefits afforded by cricket for male staff. Another UK firm had a staff social and sports club, but although this was supposedly a service for all staff, in practice only men used its facilities (of a large sports field, and a bar with wide-screen television showing major sports events). In Turkey advertisements for financial services companies often suggest a sexualised service for male clients from attractive women staff, not unlike the practice of portraying female airline cabin crew as sexually attractive, attentive and ``caring''. This is reflected in a preference for women staff in certain departments, but it undermines the women's capacity to base their job performance on their competence and expertise:
Investment experts, marketing department and stock exchange session experts are chosen from women candidates in order that, as customers are men, they can serve better and appeal to them better (Female junior manager).
Men managers' traditional assumptions are barely concealed. For example, the term ``ladies'' is frequently used, rather than ``women'', which carries connotations of chivalry and implies the need for male protection. This implicit or explicit notion damages women's career development by leading male managers to deny them certain opportunities. In Turkey the Ottoman tradition which prevented women from serving men or from moving about freely in public places continues to provide a rationale for excluding women from certain occupational functions:
Ladies also enter the audit department but they, for example, don't go everywhere. But you can send men to branches anywhere in Turkey (Male senior manager). Only men are recruited as debt collectors. ``Run here, run there.'' I think that they believe it would be difficult for women (Female manager).
Informants in both societies often regarded the term ``manager'' as synonymous with ``man''. The following quote from a UK woman manager shows this, and again reveals the significance of sport as an element of the ``ideal manager'' stereotype:
Question: What sort of person's face fits management here? Answer: He must like sport. He must be very, very sporty ± cricket. Oh yes, the corporate days out. Women are not excluded, they are just not invited to start with. So, yes, I suppose it is excluding. But would anyone want to go with them, in any case? Very showy, pushy, making a
A UK informant referred to the sexualised appearance of women staff expected by some male managers:
There was a manager in one of the branches ± every woman he employed is blonde. He just liked blondes. I had to go and work over there. I was supposed to be there for six months. We just didn't get on. Lots of lipstick, lots of cleavage, lots of tight clothes. That's the sort of woman that gets on around here (Female manager).
Thus a norm of overt heterosexuality implicitly associated with these posts excludes those who cannot meet these expectations. In 329
Turkey sexual minorities were invisible in the workplace, and overt homosexuality is socially unacceptable (although in private, homosexual acts are not uncommon between heterosexual men). Heterosexuality was also assumed in the UK firms, with few references to ``out'' gays or lesbians, role models or support mechanisms:
I don't know any gays or lesbians here. The financial services industry is not exactly the sort of place you can find them, is it? (Female manager).
effectively when they achieved a promotion. However, even when they had this knowledge, they often felt that they lacked the power to press their case:
I am very motivated by my job. A man was doing it before me, earning £9,000 more than me and he had me and a supervisor, and I haven't got either at the moment (Female manager). I was paid less. I don't know if it was because I was a woman but I took the position over. The person who was in the department before me was demoted, so I was actually in charge of him and he was on £19,000 and I started on £11,000 ± £8,000 difference. Life is hard, isn't it? It is unfair and life is like that, so I just accept it. If I let it bother me, I wouldn't have been successful. I would have spent all my time thinking ``I should be earning more money''. If I thought that, I wouldn't accept the job. So I knew what I was doing when I took it on. I just accepted it. I don't say I was happy, but I accepted it (Female manager).
This presumed reticence about self-disclosure is probably rational:
I never ever come out at Company Y. There are open people that are gay, that are already out. There is (F F F) who works in our section, he is gay, open. He's been in the company for 12 years and he is still on a low grade. I don't know whether it is to do with his work or it is because he is gay, I really don't know (Lesbian clerical worker).
Some exclusionary networks excluded not only all women but also many men. One informant explained about the significance of Freemasonry in the UK financial services industry:
Company X, being a very small community, is still quite strong in the Masonic community. They used to get people that you wouldn't necessarily think are suitable for jobs but sometimes they used to be appointed. You could probably say that half of them are Masons at Executive Committee. But at one time it was all of them, so there is now more chance that you can get into management. It's a secret society. It's a bit like a gentlemen's club but they vow to look after each other and help each other out in business terms. For instance, to supply company cars or building works or whatever, if they have got the chance to put business to a fellow Mason, they will. Likewise in a job or career, if they need to take somebody on, they make it preferential treatment to this person because that's the way the secret society works. It's a closed society, so you are invited in. I've been actually invited three times, refused each time (Male manager).
In both Turkey and the UK the culture of long working hours served to disadvantage women, especially those with domestic commitments. The capacity to work long hours was regarded as a sign of commitment to the organisation, whether or not this was actually necessary in terms of the workload, and it differentiated those who stayed late from those who left promptly at the end of the working day. Like participation in team sports, staying late also opened up networking opportunities which brought career advantage:
Well, the first thing I noticed here was that at five o'clock there was a mass exodus from the building. I would think probably 90 per cent of the people go home, which is fine. That's their going home time, and they are perfectly entitled to do it. But X (senior manager) and myself both tend to stay on longer and talk over things quite often late in the day. So we're very similar and I've never had problems with him as a manager. I sort of like the hour that you pull together what you have done during the day (Male manager).
In Turkey male social networks based on the common experience of military service conferred similar advantages, although men complained about having no guarantee of reemployment after their service as a disadvantage. Just as the exercise of Masonic influence secretly excluded women from entry to management posts in one UK company, knowledge about who was on which grade and their salaries was also kept officially secret. This too disadvantaged women, as they lacked the knowledge for bargaining
This was not an option for the Turkish or UK women with child care and domestic commitments. When Turkish women staff were expected to work late, they often made private arrangements with each other in order to cope with their domestic responsibilities. Sexual harassment at work is a taboo topic in Turkey, and male informants denied that it existed. Procedures for dealing with it existed, but they were burdensome and required ``proof'' that the incidents had taken place, whereas by their very nature, these incidents almost always take place in private. One 330
woman auditor complained about her treatment by a client in a conservative region, when she wore a mini skirt. As a result, she no longer undertook such visits. The UK women reported having experienced several incidents, all involving senior men harassing junior women staff. Some involved unwanted sexual overtures, often during business trips away from home, or the naked exercise of power. The masculine managerial culture promoted aggressive, domineering behaviour which junior women staff experienced as bullying. There were few mechanisms for supporting victims, and such behaviour was even regarded as a normal part of work life, rather than being recognised as a deliberate strategy employed to exclude women from favoured occupations and posts. Other studies of women managers confirm many of the barriers to career advancement noted here (for example, see Ackah et al., 1999). This paper explores the social processes underlying them, through which male hegemony is promoted and perpetuated within organisations, by differentiating ``them'' from ``us'' in gendered ways. To some extent this behaviour may not be a conscious strategy used by male managers, but rather just follows ``naturally'' from traditional ideologies about women's nature, characteristics and capabilities. However, it may represent cavalier disregard of the discriminatory impact of certain behaviours (such as the exclusionary nature of cricket), or a more active strategy to preserve male advantage. The influence of Freemasonry, the use of sexist recruitment practices and workplace harassment provide examples of this.
What can be done? Strategies for change
Pressure for change in the direction of promoting equal opportunities may emerge from various sources. First, women themselves can take action. There is growing evidence of activism in the form of companybased ``glass ceiling'' committees and national networks of women in banking, to provide peer support and advice. In Turkey women members of the financial services trade union are active in pressing for women's rights within the sector. Also, the use of what is called ``exit strategies'' in the literature (Goffee and Scase, 1985; Flanders, 1994;
Colgan and Ledwith, 1996), which the rest of the population calls ``leaving a job'', when significant numbers of valuable women staff become so frustrated by their current post and promotion opportunities that they resign, may encourage employers to improve their provision. The alternative is the loss of trained, experienced staff, and the disruption and costs associated with recruiting replacements. Second, market forces may lead financial organisations to improve their career development opportunities for women staff (and for the members of other under-represented social groups). This is necessary, for them to be able to recruit and retain the staff of the required quality, to prosper in a highly competitive business environment. This is called ``the business case'' for equal opportunities. At the same time it is expected that technological change will make obsolete many traditionally female clerical jobs. In both countries this happens through branch closures and downsizing programmes. When there is little popular support for moral arguments in favour of equality, these technological changes, coupled with a ``business case'' approach, may have a negative impact on women's employment by justifying women's exclusion as their work becomes redundant. The UK trade unions do not offer prospects for significant change. As the representation of politically active women in the leadership of the main banking union (BIFU) has increased, it has made more rapid progress in its equal opportunities negotiations with employers. Equality issues may now be a higher priority in the union's collective bargaining agenda, but the majority of BIFU's guidelines concerning equal opportunities for women are recommendations in principle, which neither seek nor enforce any explicit commitment from employers. Also, the organisational hierarchy of the union is gendered. While 51 per cent of the 154,576 union members were women in 1985, only 13 per cent of the Executive members, 19 per cent of the full-time officials and 21 per cent of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) delegates were women (Stamp and Robarts, 1986, p. 84). Until the trade unions redress their own unequal gender hierarchies, trade unionism is almost certainly incapable of offering any radical solutions to sex inequalities in the sector. In Turkey, although the financial services union does not offer a separate agenda for women at work, women's employment issues have traditionally been part of the trade union 331
programme. Women bank workers are used to demanding and achieving better entitlements than those in other sectors, in relation to such issues as maternity leave, child care and transportation between home and work. Finally, legislation may bring changes. The UK equality legislation of the 1970s changed attitudes about employment, even if it failed to bring about radical social changes. Since then European Union legislation has been used effectively by individuals to challenge discrimination by UK employers, which has in turn forced improvements in UK employment practices. The UK government has recently introduced measures to give staff on part-time and short-term contracts similar rights to those enjoyed by full-time permanent staff, minimum hourly pay rates, and changes to enhance the rights of employed parents. It is too soon to assess the impact of these changes, but they should particularly benefit women, who are far more likely than men to be in such employment. In 1985 the Turkish government signed up to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. The Directorate-General on the Status and Problems of Women was formed under the supervision of the Turkish Grand Assembly to encourage the application of this legislation. Although they cannot bring about radical changes in the short term, these legal and structural changes provide encouraging signs of progressive moves towards equality in employment for women in Turkey.
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doc_640491789.docx
Corporate governance refers to the system by which corporations are directed and controlled. The governance structure specifies the distribution of rights and responsibilities among different participants in the corporation.
Research Report on Sex Equality in the Financial Services Sector in Turkey and the UK
Introduction
The financial services sector has a reputation in many countries of providing ``safe'', socially acceptable white-collar employment for women. However, its record in terms of equal opportunities does not match this perception. he authors routine clerical posts formerly occupied by Organisational restructuring in the financial women obsolete (Crompton and Sanderson, services sector has taken advantage of infor1994; Halford et al., 1997). Although the mation technology to cut costs and to promote competitiveness by downsizing, making many proportion of women managers in UK banks Mustafa F. Ozbilgin is Lecturer in Human Resource È has risen considerably in recent years, these Management at the University of Hertfordshire Business posts have less authority and autonomy, and School, Hertford, UK. offer relatively lower salaries than formerly In the UK and other western countries the financial (Ashburner, 1988). Internationally, the most services sector is seen as offering women better career prestigious and lucrative positions in banks' prospects than most other sectors. Unprecedented boardrooms and the money markets are still numbers of well-qualified young women are now largely male preserves. The outcome of these achieving promotion to first-line and middle management restructuring processes is continued disadvanpositions. Companies are represented as progressive tage for women staff within the sector.
Research aims and methodology
This article draws on a study of sex equality in the financial services sector in Turkey and the
employers, committed to promoting equal opportunities. However, a cross-cultural study of three Turkish and six UK banks and high street financial organisations explores how organisational ideologies and cultures operate to perpetuate inequality, based on managers' gendered conceptions of ``the ideal worker''. Favoured staff were identified, sponsored, promoted and rewarded, often based on their personal affinity with senior managers rather than objective criteria. This distinction between favour and exclusion operates not only along the traditional lines of gender, class, age, sexual orientation, religion and physical ability, but also along the new dimensions of marriage, networking, safety, mobility and Electronic access The current issue and full text archive of this journal is space. Despite local and cross-cultural differences in the significance of these factors, the cumulative disadvantage suffered by women managers and supervisors in both countries was remarkably similar.
UK (Ozbilgin, 1998) which compared the È experiences of male and female staff , focusing on how organisational practices promote and sustain sex segregation. The fieldwork generated 45 taped interviews and 362 completed questionnaires provided by male and female staff at all levels from process workers to senior management, employed in the head offices and branches of major banks, building societies and insurance firms. This article focuses on issues of organisational culture, using the interview data to explore women informants' experiences of marginalisation and exclusion from oppor-
tunities for career advancement. The effects of these social processes are to perpetuate male privilege in employment in the sector, through the use of subtle, largely hidden means. The article concludes with a review of possible sources of pressure for change.
Women in the financial services sector in Turkey
The modern, secular Turkish state was founded in 1923 under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal 325
(known as Ataturk, or ``leader of the Turks''), È after an extended period of political upheaval following the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Significant legal and societal changes promoting the equality of the sexes were soon introduced, including the banning of polygamy, equal rights in matters of divorce and child custody, and women's right to vote. The prohibition of the head and full body covers for women, which had been potent symbols of political Islam in the Ottoman Empire, the introduction of secular education, and lifting the bans on women's employment, in both state and private organisations and companies, consolidated these gains. Ataturk's teachings and speeches had a È far-reaching impact on matters of sex equality, especially in relation to employment. His vision was to encourage Turkish women into all sectors of employment by removing the restrictions and barriers in their way. He pursued this by supporting the first wave of women profes- sionals in Turkey, such as doctors, pilots and educators, and promoting their visibility as role models in the Turkish media. These efforts had a strong nationalist and secular message, which contrasted strongly with the situation in other predominantly Muslim countries. However, although these changes certainly promoted the social status of a group of city-dwelling elite  women in Turkey, they did little for the vast majority of women, from the lower social and economic classes and in rural communities. Currently the notion of the secular state is under attack from Islamic groups, who enjoy widespread support, creating political instability. In connection with the nationalist movement in the early years of the century, 24 national banks were established between 1908 and 1923. Three more government-owned banks were subsequently established to finance the economic development of the new republic. They pursued a secular and nationalist ideology, in accordance with government policy, which promoted women's employment and provided career opportunities for them in the years to follow. More than 30 privately owned banks were established in the 1950s, a period of economic liberalisation. As a new industry, they were free from the traditional sex-typing of jobs, and began to provide large numbers of Turkish women in major cities with better than average employment opportunities, earning a reputation in so doing which persists to the present day. In the 1980s new liberal economic policies were pursued to promote the globalisation of
the financial services sector, which established a free-market economy and encouraged the integration of the Turkish economy into the world-wide economic community. Several reforms, such as the establishment of the stock market and the liberalisation of foreign trade, were undertaken during this period to increase the competitiveness of the Turkish financial services sector. These liberal policies also permitted the establishment of financial institutions which claim to be working in accordance with Islamic principles, following a model which originated from the Islamic countries of the Arab Peninsula and the Middle East. These institutions, which operate on a system of interest-free profit-sharing arrangements (because lending for interest is forbidden), have grown substantially in the last decade. They keep the enterprises for which they provide financial support under religious, as well as financial, scrutiny. They do not employ women, because of the system of religious beliefs on which they are founded, and they support an economy which promotes a minimum sex segregation, if not the total exclusion of women from the workplace and from business and industry. Although the financial services sector is small, employing only 2 per cent of the Turkish employed population in 1992 (DIE, 1994), they earn the highest average income of all sectors. Women comprised 31 per cent of its staff in 1992 (DIE, 1995). The stateowned banks and most commercial banks (except for the Islamic finance houses described above) now provide employment opportunities for women, and this sector is traditionally considered to offer ``secure'', ``prestigious'' and above-average career opportunities for women (Seyman, 1992). Newspaper articles frequently argue that women enjoy equal opportunities in the sector, and that it offers women ideal careers in terms of compatibility with their other roles (Atikkan, 1993; Gunaydin, 1997). There is a widely-held view that women, irrespective of their socio-economic, religious, and ethnic backgrounds, enjoy equal opportunities in banking. However, in practice Turkish financial institutions offer employment opportunities only to a minority of privileged employees, who are well-educated and willing to sustain a life-style and physical appearance that is considered acceptable. Thus, employment opportunities within the sector are skewed not only by gender, but also by other 326
socio-economic variables such as class, education, birthplace, ethnicity, age and physical appearance. Although no reliable statistics are available on the proportion of women in different occupations and at different levels of the hierarchy within the sector generally, data from the personnel archives of the large firms in this study suggest that women are underrepresented at the higher levels. Vertical and horizontal sex segregation is still prevalent (that is, women are concentrated in certain occupations within the sector and are largely absent from others, and disproportionately occupy posts at lower levels of the hierarchy). Women comprised 29 per cent of the managers in one firm studied, between 17 per cent (of senior management) and 51 per cent (of intermediate and junior management) in another, and between 10 per cent (of senior management) and 20 per cent (of intermediate and junior management) in a third company. Consistently, a lower proportion of women worked in head offices than in the less prestigious branches, and they were typically younger and better qualified than their male colleagues. One explanation is age-discrimination in companies' training and promotion policies, which affects women staff more than men (Ozbilgin, 1998). È As Turkey has no progressive legislation concerning sex equality to compare with the UK equal opportunities laws, several companies employ no women, justifying this by their ideological and traditional (generally Islamic) views. Thus sex equality in the sector is left to the devices of the market economy and the good intentions of employers.
satisfaction with ``jobs'' rather than ``careers'' which characterised the 1950s and 1960s. However, as late as 1986 women still constituted under 2 per cent of bank managers or senior departmental managers in the sector (Alston, 1987), supporting Ashburner's (1988) view that women were typically promoted within the clerical grades, but could not successfully challenge the maledominated composition of the managerial grades. With increasing numbers of qualified women entering the sector, firms were impelled to adopt legal minimum requirements of sex equality, after legislation was passed in the 1970s. However, Collinson (1987), in his study of the equal opportunities programmes of two banks in the UK, argued that the equal opportunities programmes implemented in the 1980s proved less effective than had been anticipated:
The initiatives of the major banks are unlikely to have a positive effect on the position of most female employees. The extension of recruitment tiering, severe restrictions on study leave, the retention of closed promotion procedures and the focusing of new schemes on a small elite  group of high potential women and men are all likely to reinforce the entrapment of most women in jobs rather than careers (Collinson, 1987, p. 20).
Women in the financial services sector in the UK
Since the 1950s UK financial institutions have faced strong competition in both their domestic and international markets. The distinction between the different types of financial companies, such as banks and building societies, was eroded under legislation which liberalised the financial markets (Humphries et al., 1992). The proportion of women acquiring financial service qualifications increased greatly during the 1970s and 1980s, indicating women's growing aspirations for career development, as opposed to their apparent
Griffin (1986) pointed out that office jobs were historically not a primary employment area for women, but rather provided employment opportunities for white middle class male clerks until the late 1870s, when the new technology of the typewriter rendered the administrative and writing skills of these men obsolete. Women were initially permitted to enter office jobs, not as the equals of men, but to undertake those jobs which men no longer wanted. Although these jobs did not offer the same high rewards to women as they formerly did to men, socially they were considered prestigious and ``secure'' jobs for young school-leaver girls for a few years prior to marriage or motherhood. Rudiments of these attitudes persisted into the 1980s. Based on her study of female bank clerks, Griffin (1986) asserts that jobs in the financial services sector are still considered ``ideal jobs for girls'' in the UK, as they are in Turkey. However, although they may now aspire to better training opportunities and higher managerial posts, women staff have come to realise that their prospects may not match their aspirations. The scope for career progression and training opportunities 327
continues to be limited for working class girls, showing that gendered organisational hierarchies coincide with class (also see Savage, 1993), race and age hierarchies:
All of the employees were white and middle class, with the exception of the younger working class woman in the production room. The branch operated according to a strict hierarchy, with the older middle class men in the most powerful senior positions. The manager, Mr Shaw, saw banking as an ``ideal job for a girl'', and boasted of the job security it could offer them (Griffin, 1986, p. 120).
Financial services is traditionally a male-dominated sector in the UK, but Shaw and Perrons (1995) argue that banking has been more progressive than most other sectors in its equal opportunities-related practices in recent years. Harker (1995) provides examples of such progressive practices in the provision of maternity leave, career break schemes and nursery places. However, these few examples of progressive policies mask widespread sex discrimination in the sector, and the current spate of mergers and company downsizing is likely to discourage investment in familyfriendly employment practices. The financial services industry is the second biggest employer of women full-time employed in the UK, after public administration, education and the health industry. However, the proportion of female staff in full-time employment in the sector has been declining steadily, from 53 per cent in 1980, to 42 per cent in 1994, when it provided employment to 1,400,000 men and 1,461,000 women. One-third of the women staff are parttimers (compared with one in 20 of the men), a proportion which has more than doubled since 1980 (EOC, 1994; 1995). The fundamental reason behind this casualisation of female labour was the widespread lack of adequate maternity and child-care provision, as well as technological change. Women in the financial services sector earn as little as 66.3 per cent of their male counterparts' weekly earnings as managers and as high as 83.6 per cent in the non-managerial grades (BIFU, 1991). Female part-timers' hourly earnings have fallen from 93 per cent of fulltime pay in 1980 to 80 per cent in 1988 (Humphries et al., 1992). Currently, sex discrimination in pay not only affects all women adversely, relative to men, but also affects different groups of women, such as part-timers, more than others. From the women's perspective, most banks' inadequate child-care provision and lack of family-friendly policies
may mean that remaining in full-time employment is almost impossible for those with children, except for those few who earn sufficiently high salaries to be able to purchase good quality private child care. Several recent studies (Ashburner, 1988; Crompton and Sanderson, 1994; Halford et al., 1997) have shown that organisational restructuring within this sector often involves gendered practices, through which men's careers and employment conditions are promoted and prioritised over women's. McInnes (1988) argued that before the late 1980s experience as a branch manager was seen as central to career progression in the sector. However, as this role has lost value in comparison with the experience of being employed in head offices, which offer a wider range of career alternatives, it has become feminised. Technological change has diminished the control and authority which branch managers enjoyed previously, as computerisation has taken decisions about financial lending and budgeting away from the branch managers, to the central authority (Crompton and Sanderson, 1994). Similarly, thousands of women in clerical grades face redundancy as routine transactions become handled by automatic electronic means.
Patterns of exclusion within organisational cultures
In both Turkey and the UK the senior managers, and hence organisational cultures, in the financial services sector are, as the preceding sections have indicated, overwhelmingly male. The stereotype of ``the ideal employee'' who is sought for recruitment and promotion therefore reflects the perceptions, beliefs, norms and prejudices of this male managerial elite. Â The necessarily brief account of gender inequalities which follows should not obscure the subtle distinctions which operate within selec- tion processes associated also with class, age, sexual orientation, religion and physical ability, but which in Turkey may cross-cut with marriage, social networks, safety and mobility, and spatial issues. Social networks were also significant in the UK firms, as the next section shows. In the UK the standardisation of recruitment, career development and promotion procedures in recent years has not prevented managers from continuing to select employees who share 328
their own characteristics, but paradoxically it has actually legitimised gendered employment practices by cloaking them in spurious ``objectivity''. Informants in both countries spoke of selecting ``the right person for the job'' and of the qualities sought in new staff, with the preferred profiles having a gender dimension which shifts according to the nature of the post. The Turkish financial services organisations typically portray a corporate image in their advertising which uses language such as dynamic, hard-working, reckless, quick, and young, qualities associated with maleness. One firm's staff recruitment literature features images of young men and women working out in a gym, using expensive equipment. The clear implicit messages conveyed are that young, cosmopolitan and urban, well-educated staff are sought, who are either male or are capable of working in accordance with male norms:
They accept people who adopt a certain behavioural mode. There are not many people from different places here (Male senior manager).
lot of noise, wear sleek suits. They are very much men's men. They are all cricket, Porsche types. The executives do like pushy, showy people (Female senior supervisor). It's a joke in Company X. ``You've got a problem if you are not a man, because you can't play cricket, so you can't get on'' (Female senior supervisor).
Although cricket is played by some women in the UK, it receives very little media attention (although the England women's team was recently world champions) and cricket is never played in mixed teams. Weekend amateur games typically last several hours, which causes conflict in families as mothers are expected to subordinate their own leisure activities to those of their male partners by providing child care and tea for the teams. In one UK finance company, the women staff had their own networks based on sport, but as this was netball, an exclusively female and low-status sport, it offered less opportunity for networking with senior managers because so few managers were women, compared with the benefits afforded by cricket for male staff. Another UK firm had a staff social and sports club, but although this was supposedly a service for all staff, in practice only men used its facilities (of a large sports field, and a bar with wide-screen television showing major sports events). In Turkey advertisements for financial services companies often suggest a sexualised service for male clients from attractive women staff, not unlike the practice of portraying female airline cabin crew as sexually attractive, attentive and ``caring''. This is reflected in a preference for women staff in certain departments, but it undermines the women's capacity to base their job performance on their competence and expertise:
Investment experts, marketing department and stock exchange session experts are chosen from women candidates in order that, as customers are men, they can serve better and appeal to them better (Female junior manager).
Men managers' traditional assumptions are barely concealed. For example, the term ``ladies'' is frequently used, rather than ``women'', which carries connotations of chivalry and implies the need for male protection. This implicit or explicit notion damages women's career development by leading male managers to deny them certain opportunities. In Turkey the Ottoman tradition which prevented women from serving men or from moving about freely in public places continues to provide a rationale for excluding women from certain occupational functions:
Ladies also enter the audit department but they, for example, don't go everywhere. But you can send men to branches anywhere in Turkey (Male senior manager). Only men are recruited as debt collectors. ``Run here, run there.'' I think that they believe it would be difficult for women (Female manager).
Informants in both societies often regarded the term ``manager'' as synonymous with ``man''. The following quote from a UK woman manager shows this, and again reveals the significance of sport as an element of the ``ideal manager'' stereotype:
Question: What sort of person's face fits management here? Answer: He must like sport. He must be very, very sporty ± cricket. Oh yes, the corporate days out. Women are not excluded, they are just not invited to start with. So, yes, I suppose it is excluding. But would anyone want to go with them, in any case? Very showy, pushy, making a
A UK informant referred to the sexualised appearance of women staff expected by some male managers:
There was a manager in one of the branches ± every woman he employed is blonde. He just liked blondes. I had to go and work over there. I was supposed to be there for six months. We just didn't get on. Lots of lipstick, lots of cleavage, lots of tight clothes. That's the sort of woman that gets on around here (Female manager).
Thus a norm of overt heterosexuality implicitly associated with these posts excludes those who cannot meet these expectations. In 329
Turkey sexual minorities were invisible in the workplace, and overt homosexuality is socially unacceptable (although in private, homosexual acts are not uncommon between heterosexual men). Heterosexuality was also assumed in the UK firms, with few references to ``out'' gays or lesbians, role models or support mechanisms:
I don't know any gays or lesbians here. The financial services industry is not exactly the sort of place you can find them, is it? (Female manager).
effectively when they achieved a promotion. However, even when they had this knowledge, they often felt that they lacked the power to press their case:
I am very motivated by my job. A man was doing it before me, earning £9,000 more than me and he had me and a supervisor, and I haven't got either at the moment (Female manager). I was paid less. I don't know if it was because I was a woman but I took the position over. The person who was in the department before me was demoted, so I was actually in charge of him and he was on £19,000 and I started on £11,000 ± £8,000 difference. Life is hard, isn't it? It is unfair and life is like that, so I just accept it. If I let it bother me, I wouldn't have been successful. I would have spent all my time thinking ``I should be earning more money''. If I thought that, I wouldn't accept the job. So I knew what I was doing when I took it on. I just accepted it. I don't say I was happy, but I accepted it (Female manager).
This presumed reticence about self-disclosure is probably rational:
I never ever come out at Company Y. There are open people that are gay, that are already out. There is (F F F) who works in our section, he is gay, open. He's been in the company for 12 years and he is still on a low grade. I don't know whether it is to do with his work or it is because he is gay, I really don't know (Lesbian clerical worker).
Some exclusionary networks excluded not only all women but also many men. One informant explained about the significance of Freemasonry in the UK financial services industry:
Company X, being a very small community, is still quite strong in the Masonic community. They used to get people that you wouldn't necessarily think are suitable for jobs but sometimes they used to be appointed. You could probably say that half of them are Masons at Executive Committee. But at one time it was all of them, so there is now more chance that you can get into management. It's a secret society. It's a bit like a gentlemen's club but they vow to look after each other and help each other out in business terms. For instance, to supply company cars or building works or whatever, if they have got the chance to put business to a fellow Mason, they will. Likewise in a job or career, if they need to take somebody on, they make it preferential treatment to this person because that's the way the secret society works. It's a closed society, so you are invited in. I've been actually invited three times, refused each time (Male manager).
In both Turkey and the UK the culture of long working hours served to disadvantage women, especially those with domestic commitments. The capacity to work long hours was regarded as a sign of commitment to the organisation, whether or not this was actually necessary in terms of the workload, and it differentiated those who stayed late from those who left promptly at the end of the working day. Like participation in team sports, staying late also opened up networking opportunities which brought career advantage:
Well, the first thing I noticed here was that at five o'clock there was a mass exodus from the building. I would think probably 90 per cent of the people go home, which is fine. That's their going home time, and they are perfectly entitled to do it. But X (senior manager) and myself both tend to stay on longer and talk over things quite often late in the day. So we're very similar and I've never had problems with him as a manager. I sort of like the hour that you pull together what you have done during the day (Male manager).
In Turkey male social networks based on the common experience of military service conferred similar advantages, although men complained about having no guarantee of reemployment after their service as a disadvantage. Just as the exercise of Masonic influence secretly excluded women from entry to management posts in one UK company, knowledge about who was on which grade and their salaries was also kept officially secret. This too disadvantaged women, as they lacked the knowledge for bargaining
This was not an option for the Turkish or UK women with child care and domestic commitments. When Turkish women staff were expected to work late, they often made private arrangements with each other in order to cope with their domestic responsibilities. Sexual harassment at work is a taboo topic in Turkey, and male informants denied that it existed. Procedures for dealing with it existed, but they were burdensome and required ``proof'' that the incidents had taken place, whereas by their very nature, these incidents almost always take place in private. One 330
woman auditor complained about her treatment by a client in a conservative region, when she wore a mini skirt. As a result, she no longer undertook such visits. The UK women reported having experienced several incidents, all involving senior men harassing junior women staff. Some involved unwanted sexual overtures, often during business trips away from home, or the naked exercise of power. The masculine managerial culture promoted aggressive, domineering behaviour which junior women staff experienced as bullying. There were few mechanisms for supporting victims, and such behaviour was even regarded as a normal part of work life, rather than being recognised as a deliberate strategy employed to exclude women from favoured occupations and posts. Other studies of women managers confirm many of the barriers to career advancement noted here (for example, see Ackah et al., 1999). This paper explores the social processes underlying them, through which male hegemony is promoted and perpetuated within organisations, by differentiating ``them'' from ``us'' in gendered ways. To some extent this behaviour may not be a conscious strategy used by male managers, but rather just follows ``naturally'' from traditional ideologies about women's nature, characteristics and capabilities. However, it may represent cavalier disregard of the discriminatory impact of certain behaviours (such as the exclusionary nature of cricket), or a more active strategy to preserve male advantage. The influence of Freemasonry, the use of sexist recruitment practices and workplace harassment provide examples of this.
What can be done? Strategies for change
Pressure for change in the direction of promoting equal opportunities may emerge from various sources. First, women themselves can take action. There is growing evidence of activism in the form of companybased ``glass ceiling'' committees and national networks of women in banking, to provide peer support and advice. In Turkey women members of the financial services trade union are active in pressing for women's rights within the sector. Also, the use of what is called ``exit strategies'' in the literature (Goffee and Scase, 1985; Flanders, 1994;
Colgan and Ledwith, 1996), which the rest of the population calls ``leaving a job'', when significant numbers of valuable women staff become so frustrated by their current post and promotion opportunities that they resign, may encourage employers to improve their provision. The alternative is the loss of trained, experienced staff, and the disruption and costs associated with recruiting replacements. Second, market forces may lead financial organisations to improve their career development opportunities for women staff (and for the members of other under-represented social groups). This is necessary, for them to be able to recruit and retain the staff of the required quality, to prosper in a highly competitive business environment. This is called ``the business case'' for equal opportunities. At the same time it is expected that technological change will make obsolete many traditionally female clerical jobs. In both countries this happens through branch closures and downsizing programmes. When there is little popular support for moral arguments in favour of equality, these technological changes, coupled with a ``business case'' approach, may have a negative impact on women's employment by justifying women's exclusion as their work becomes redundant. The UK trade unions do not offer prospects for significant change. As the representation of politically active women in the leadership of the main banking union (BIFU) has increased, it has made more rapid progress in its equal opportunities negotiations with employers. Equality issues may now be a higher priority in the union's collective bargaining agenda, but the majority of BIFU's guidelines concerning equal opportunities for women are recommendations in principle, which neither seek nor enforce any explicit commitment from employers. Also, the organisational hierarchy of the union is gendered. While 51 per cent of the 154,576 union members were women in 1985, only 13 per cent of the Executive members, 19 per cent of the full-time officials and 21 per cent of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) delegates were women (Stamp and Robarts, 1986, p. 84). Until the trade unions redress their own unequal gender hierarchies, trade unionism is almost certainly incapable of offering any radical solutions to sex inequalities in the sector. In Turkey, although the financial services union does not offer a separate agenda for women at work, women's employment issues have traditionally been part of the trade union 331
programme. Women bank workers are used to demanding and achieving better entitlements than those in other sectors, in relation to such issues as maternity leave, child care and transportation between home and work. Finally, legislation may bring changes. The UK equality legislation of the 1970s changed attitudes about employment, even if it failed to bring about radical social changes. Since then European Union legislation has been used effectively by individuals to challenge discrimination by UK employers, which has in turn forced improvements in UK employment practices. The UK government has recently introduced measures to give staff on part-time and short-term contracts similar rights to those enjoyed by full-time permanent staff, minimum hourly pay rates, and changes to enhance the rights of employed parents. It is too soon to assess the impact of these changes, but they should particularly benefit women, who are far more likely than men to be in such employment. In 1985 the Turkish government signed up to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. The Directorate-General on the Status and Problems of Women was formed under the supervision of the Turkish Grand Assembly to encourage the application of this legislation. Although they cannot bring about radical changes in the short term, these legal and structural changes provide encouraging signs of progressive moves towards equality in employment for women in Turkey.
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