Citi rolls out ad campaign highlighting gender pay gap

Citigroup is aiming to draw attention to the gender wage gap, and its own efforts to promote women to senior roles, with a new advertising campaign featuring some of its employees’ children.

The campaign consists of photographs taken of Citi employees’ young children reacting when an interviewer talks to them about the gender wage gap. Citi launched the campaign, “The Moment,” with a Times Square billboard on Thursday, the day before the International Day of the Girl. The bank will also run print advertisements in several major newspapers.

Citi is linking the campaign to its internal efforts to promote more women and minorities to senior and higher paying roles. The company believes this will help address the fact that as a group women at Citi make about 71% of what men there make.

“Citi’s willingness to be transparent on the pay equity and representation issue is what holds us accountable for making progress,” Sara Wechter, Citigroup’s global head of human resources, said in a press release on Thursday. “Citi is committed to ensuring equal pay for equal work for all of our colleagues globally and we are working diligently to close the female and minority representation gaps across our firm.”

Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat discussed the gender wage gap. and Citi’s efforts to narrow that gap, in his keynote speech at a recent dinner honoring American Banker’s Most Powerful Women in Banking and Finance.

Early this year, Citi disclosed its raw pay gap data, in response to a shareholder proposal from Arjuna Capital. Citi was alone in doing so, however. Several other large banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, have resisted shareholder proposals that they do the same.

Some companies have voluntarily revealed their adjusted pay data, which accounts for factors like job title and geographic location. But equal pay advocates have pushed for the unadjusted pay data, which compares women’s and men’s collective salaries across the entire organization. They say the raw figures give a better sense of whether women are actually rising through the ranks or mostly being clustered into lower-paid roles.

Women make up half of Citi’s global workforce, but hold only 37% of its most senior positions, the bank said. The company intends to increase representation at the assistant vice president through managing director levels in the United States to at least 40% women and 8% black employees by 2021.

“The numbers are difficult,” Wechter said when the company disclosed its pay gap data in January. “We should obviously be at 100% parity, and that’s what we’re striving for.”

Read more:

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