City woman's £1.4m payout

A high-flying City analyst who was denied bonuses worth hundreds of thousands of pounds because she was a woman is to receive a £1.4 million payout.

Julie Bower won a sexual discrimination case against Schroder Securities Ltd last year but the firm appealed. Today, she was celebrating the largest compensation award for a sex discrimination case in British history as the company dropped that appeal.

The tribunal heard that Ms Bower, 35, was awarded a "lousy" £25,000 annual bonus while two male colleagues pocketed £650,000 and £440,000. The Oxford graduate walked out of her £120,000-a-year job at Schroder Securities, claiming male managers were trying to wreck her career.

The married mother-of-one had been unemployed and reduced to living on benefits since she was driven out of the investment bank in October 1999. The £1,412,823 payout when a four-day hearing to determine compensation ruled that the £25,000 bonus awarded in 1999 - later increased to £50,000 - should have been £170,000. The panel also awarded her the salary, bonuses, pension contributions and car allowances she could have expected up to the present day.

The case has already prompted the Government to commission a report from Denise Kingsmill, their advisor on equal pay. Today, Julie Mellor, chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission, said: "A culture of secrecy about pay makes it all too easy for discrimination to creep in. Julie Bower's case is a stark illustration of the problem. But it affects women around the country at all levels of the workforce. Women still earn on average 18 per cent less per hour than men. All employers need to review their pay and bonus systems to check they are fair and transparent.

"This case also sheds light on some of the barriers women working in the City can face. If City employers want to capitalise fully on the talent available to them, they need to be sure their working culture doesn't prevent women from getting to the top."

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