“You are constantly going against the default thinking”: hegemonic masculinity and the gender pay gap in the professional services

The gender pay gap is a complex inequality, made of a range of explained and unexplained inequalities in work and gender relations. Despite the introduction of mandatory reporting requirements in 2017, reductions of the gender pay gap have stagnated. This is especially true within the financial and legal services, a sector entrenched with assumptions of white, middle-class masculinity. In this thesis, I therefore utilise a theoretical framework of hegemonic masculinity to problematise the power held by men in the financial and legal sectors to integrate a meaningful understanding of discrimination in the gender pay gap. Through forty-two life-history interviews, supplemented with document analysis of gender pay gap reports from leading finance and law firms, contributions are made to the gender pay gap debate in two ways: the identification of gendered wage penalties and premiums across the career span, and a visible resistance to gender pay gap initiatives to maintain structures of inequality. The culture and structure of the financial and legal professions are argued as a central practise of hegemonic masculinity in the gender pay gap. Careers are narrowly defined upon extreme working patterns, entrepreneurial skills, the accumulation of masculinised human capital, and assumptions of continuous, full-time employment. Any deviations incur direct penalties on wages and bonuses received, and indirect penalties upon restricted career trajectories. A theoretical innovation of “glass bubbles” is therefore proposed: highly skilled occupations that exist in isolation from up-or-out career paths, offering no promotion opportunities and as such incur significant pay penalties over the life-course. I further argue that the need to conform to a hegemonic masculinity obscures structures of inequalities. Current strategies to reduce the gender pay gap are ineffective in challenging underlying drivers when failed to be seen as a legitimate inequality. False narratives of equality initiatives thus obscure stagnated progress on the gender pay gap. I therefore problematise the ability of senior leaders to enact meaningful change and are centred as a significant site of resistance. When taken together, this thesis contributes to existing research on the gender pay gap and careers in the profession services by demonstrating the practises and processes which incur gendered wage penalties and premiums.