International Women’s Day #BalanceForBetter

Friday 8^th March 2019

A note from our Managing Director Clare Scott:

“International Women's Day is a global initiative to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of Women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity.

The investment and savings industry has taken big strides to attain gender parity over the last few years. Initiatives like the Diversity Project, CityHive and our own LGBT Great initiative are all working together to achieve progress. We still have a way to go before gender parity is achieved and here at The Ocean Partnership we recognise that it is a journey.

This year’s theme is #BalanceforBetter. In my view, balance is not a Women's issue but an agenda which should involve everyone. It was pleasing to learn that the FTSE 100 has recently achieved 30% Women on boards which has been achieved by getting the majority, that is the Men, to support, empower and promote Women to the top.It is now time to take this principal to the rest of the workforce and beyond. Gender balance is of course essential for economies and communities to thrive.

Our recruitment team at The Ocean Partnership is extremely proud of our record in attracting and recruiting Women and other minority talent into the sector we work with. This year we are calling on the sector to adopt more inclusive recruitment practices which result in better representation of the diverse talent pools. In 2018, we also contributed to the Recruitment Employment Confederation Gender Recruitment report and 71% of our placements were Women or BAME. We were nominated as ‘Recruiter of The Year’ in the 2018 Women in Finance Awards and as ‘Small Employer of the Year’ in the UK Venus Awards. It was here where I was also proud to be final shortlisted as an ‘Outstanding CEO’.

This year, to mark International Women’s Day in 2019, I am proud to announce that The Ocean Partnership has signed up to the Women in Recruitment Charter and we look forward to building on the progress that we have made so far.

Throughout 2019 our team will continue to encourage the investment and savings industry to understand, support and recruit more Women where possible. It is our role to get our clients to think differently and the responsibility of everyone to help produce a gender balance which is far better". 

Clare is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of The Ocean Partnership.