Breaking finance and business news, tax information, jobs and more for finance directors and senior finance professionals.

Nearly 40 years on from the outlawing of discrimination against women in the workplace, sexism remains rife, according to the women's rights organisation.

Sexist stereotypes 

The Fawcett Society pointed out that only 11 per cent of FTSE 100 company directors are women and claimed that 30,000 women lose their jobs every year in the UK simply for being pregnant.

Two-thirds of low paid workers are women, whilst women working full-time are paid on average 17 per cent less than men.

Eighteen per cent of sex discrimination compensation awards are for sexual harassment.

The Fawcett Society said it was joining the dots between women’s experiences in the workplace and a wider culture in which women were subjected to sexist stereotypes and were increasingly sexually objectified.

The organisation added that attempts to shoe-horn women in to workplaces designed by men for men have failed.

The Fawcett Society said that this story of disadvantage was not unique to the City of London, but was replicated in towns and cities up and down the country.

Mummy track 

The Society claimed that at every level in the workplace there was a web of policies and practices that prevent women from participating on an equal footing.

“Motherhood carries a penalty and poverty has a female face. Fawcett is calling on the Government to extend the right to work flexibly to all so that flexible working is not seen as the “mummy track”, and ending the opt-out of the EU Work Time Directive in order to curb the destructive long working hours culture,” the organisation said.

The Fawcett Society said that the macho workplace culture is as damaging to men as it is to women.

Few senior flexible jobs mean mothers – who still do the bulk of caring at home – are forced into lower-paid, part-time work below their skill level.

UK full-time employees work the longest hours in the EU. This means women, as the primary carers, can’t compete in a workplace where performance is judged according to hours put in, not quality of work produced.

Lack of senior flexible roles 

Traditional ‘women’s work’ is undervalued: women’s employment is concentrated in the five ‘C’s – caring, cleaning, catering, clerical work and cashiering – and is valued less than traditional ‘men’s work’.

The annual pay of a mechanic is £17,700; that of a child carer is £13,900. The UK has the largest pay gap in the European Union.

The Fawcett Society found that the ‘glass ceiling’ remained firmly in place in both the public and private sectors.

Women’s exclusion from power is caused by a combination of factors, including a lack of senior flexible roles, the long working-hours culture, and plain ‘old fashioned’ discrimination about women’s abilities.

All women are now subject to a damaging culture of sexual objectification, waved in by the normalisation of the sex ‘industry’, according to the Fawcett Society report.

Lap dancing clubs used for entertaining clients 

Women in the workplace experience worrying levels of direct sexual harassment, and visiting a lap dance club has become an increasingly normal way for companies to entertain clients.

Yet polling carried out by Ipsos MORI and published today shows that 60 per cent of women would be very or fairly uncomfortable working for an organisation that allows its employees to use lap dancing venues for entertaining clients.

Fifty-two per cent of men and 59 per cent of women believe it is not acceptable for businesses to use lap dance clubs as venues for entertaining clients.

Under current legislation, local authorities have few powers to impose restrictions and conditions on lap dance clubs. The first UK lap dance club opened in 1995. There are now over 300 lap dance clubs in the UK.

As a first step to challenging the objectification of women, Fawcett is calling for lap dance clubs to be licensed as Sex Encounter Establishments (as sex shops currently are) instead of the current Premises License (like ordinary pubs and clubs), enabling local authorities to place greater restrictions on the clubs.