An all too exclusive club

This week's top headlines: Microsoft Corp. has shown little progress toward its goal to double the number of Black managers, while the federal government questions whether its diversity plans illegally consider race in employment. The Pope made comments calling for civil unions for gay couples, a significant departure from the Catholic Church's long-held opposition to same sex marriage.  A U.K. government investigation into racial disparities finds that business owners who are Black, Asian or from other ethnic minorities face systemic barriers and struggle more than White peers.  An exclusive club has recently added two new members. Rania Llewellyn was named the first woman to lead Laurentian Bank of Canada, one of the country's eight largest banks, this week. She joins Jane Fraser, who will take the reins at Citigroup Inc. next year to become the first female chief of a major U.S. bank. The appointments were hailed as milestones in the movement for gender equality. But the pace of women moving into the C-suite at banks has been slow, according to a September study by S&P Global Market Intelligence. Only 32 public banks in the U.S., or just 4% of the industry, have a female CEO. Of those firms, just 14 have more than $1 billion in assets. High-profile CEO appointments show women in the industry that there's a path to the top job. But diversity experts ask: Why did it take so long and who's next? The chief executive's at Wall Street's biggest banks once Fraser joins next year. Source: Bloomberg The current cheerleading for female bank executives obscures the inhospitable reality that many other women working in finance confront. A group of former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. employees claim in a lawsuit that the bank denied them equal pay and promotions because of their gender. This week, a federal judge ruled that former Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein and former President Gary Cohn must testify in a case that's dragged on more than a decade. The Covid crisis has also added new barriers for working women in finance and elsewhere. Those in the age group most likely to have young children are leaving the job market at the fastest pace since the height of the pandemic as many schools and child care centers remain closed, according to U.S. Labor Department data. This so-called female recession threatens to wipe out decades of economic progress, particularly for women of color. Unemployment for Hispanic women surged to 20.2% in April, compared with 4.9% in February. Black women saw their worst jobless rate since the 1980s—16.5%—in May, even though other groups were beginning to see an improvement by that time. While it's important to celebrate some women taking leaps forward, let's not forget that others are falling behind.  Follow Us Get the newsletter By the Numbers The pandemic is taking a toll on Americans' mental health, most of all for young adults and teens, according to a survey from the American Psychological Association.  Data from the Census Bureau confirms that more than half of U.S. adults under the age of 50 have been feeling depressed at least several days a week.   Sponsored Content by AARP When your employees are thriving, so is your business—with more productivity and less turnover. Today, nearly 1 in 6 employees have family caregiving responsibilities outside of work. Learn how you can support your workers (and improve your business) with helpful family caregiving resources from AARP.   Before You Go For Black women, the advice to "lean in" is not as useful as "team up," say two authors in their new book "A Blessing: Women of Color Teaming Up to Lead, Empower and Thrive." Decades of industrial pollution have left a poor, Black neighborhood in Southwest Detroit more vulnerable to Covid-19, Bloomberg Businessweek reports. Vigilantism by far-right groups appears to be less frequent than it was three months ago, but also more violent, according to Bloomberg CityLab. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Bloomberg Equality newsletter. Unsubscribe | Bloomberg.com | Contact Us Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington, New York, NY, 10022