Last week, on International Women’s Day, the Luxembourg Women in Finance Charter was launched with its first 69 signatories to improve gender diversity across Luxembourg’s financial sector.
As the bell rang to mark International Women’s Day at the LSE, the Luxembourg Women in Finance Charter was launched by founding partners ABBL, ALFI, ACA, LuxCMA, LuxFLAG, under the patronage of the Ministry of Finance. First signatories included leading banks such as the European Investment Bank as well as asset managers and insurance firms.
“More diversity leads to better decision-making and better economic outcomes for companies and for society. This is why, as minister of finance, I have decided to champion the creation of a national Women in Finance Charter, and act as its patron, with the aim to achieve greater gender balance in the financial sector,” said minister Yuriko Backes.
By signing the Charter, financial sector actors underline their ambition to make the financial centre more inclusive and encourage representation of women at all levels. The signatories commit to designating an executive within their firm that will be responsible for gender diversity and inclusion and commit to setting voluntary targets to reach these goals, especially at executive and senior management levels.
While these targets are only voluntary, annual reporting will strengthen each organisation’s sense of commitment and allow outsiders to follow progress made on this important topic. The minister of finance will support the publication of a yearly, publicly available progress report.
With more than 60,000 women and men employed in the financial sector and related services, the financial industry is also one of the largest employers in the country and therefore plays a critical role in raising awareness gender diversity across the country. While Luxembourg’s gender pay gap is among the lowest in the EU, it ranked lowest in Europe in the share of female executives.
The ministry of finance supports the Charter as part of its overall strategy to promote greater gender diversity in the financial sector and gender finance more broadly. The launch of the Charter also coincided with the listing on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange of the first Sub-Saharan gender bond ever issued.
