Sexuality and the City

The nearest anyone gets to the subject is Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index, which measures how companies treat LGBT employees. Last year the winner was Ernst & Young, with Barclays and Goldman Sachs following closely behind — that’s how entrenched the LGBT lobby has become in corporate life.

In fact, far from shying away from gay-friendly issues, major banks and financial institutions seem to be falling over themselves to embrace them —especially when there’s money to make. Most advertise in the gay press, many sponsor diversity events and all have their own LGBT networks, which barely existed a decade or so ago —prompting me to set up Jake, a professional network for gay businesspeople.

“Times have changed,” one senior banker tells me. “But tackling homophobia isn’t just the right thing to do, it makes good business sense too.”

At the turn of this century, accounts of homophobic bullying were commonplace. Coming out was a swift and easy method of career suicide.

“I could deal with whispers in the corridor and snidey remarks,” said one banker, who has since left the industry altogether. “But a month after I came out, I got this weirdly negative performance review and was then overlooked for a guaranteed promotion.”

No one is naïve enough to think homophobia in every UK workplace is extinct. But in most City environments it’s been locked away in the store cupboard for at least the past five years.

Trading floors may once have been filled with shiny-suited, stripper-addicted petrolheads. Some still are — though traders have got less cash for girls and cars today. But these deal-makers are now part of a new generation that has grown up alongside openly gay schoolmates, friends or family members.

Most young people no longer think in terms of gay or straight. The debate’s like an old car crash. Move on, there’s nothing to see here any more.

In fact, thanks to the Equalities Act of 2010 and its knock-on effect in the workplace, being gay can sometimes turn out to give you a career advantage over your pale, male and stale colleagues. With quotas for women being introduced in boardrooms, some companies are even exploring the benefits of a “pink quota”.

In Western societies where gay people are free to be themselves, they’ve been shown to be innovators and trendsetters whose input in corporate environments can deliver that all-important “competitive edge”.

One City worker told me of a gay man who applied for a job in a major organisation, without reference to his sexuality. He was turned down. When he re-applied adding his civil partnership to his CV, he was called to interview and ended up getting the job.

It’s a crazy example but illustrates just how far the pendulum has swung in Britain.

A far greater challenge comes when gay people find themselves posted for work to less enlightened countries, especially those in Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Although banks are meant to be global organisations with Equal Opportunity policies extending to employees wherever they are located, there are still many practical hurdles to overcome. How, for instance, does a gay person get a work permit for a civil partner in a country like Singapore, where homosexuality is outlawed on religious grounds?

A friend of mine recently arrived for a business meeting in west Africa, realising he’d forgotten to remove a copy of the gay magazine Attitude from his briefcase.

“I felt like a drug mule going through customs,” he told me. “I was sweating like mad and had visions of being thrown into some fleapit for smuggling obscene, illegal material promoting homosexuality into the country.”

Thankfully, he sailed through without being checked. But this everyday occurrence illustrates how steps towards equality in the UK only serve to highlight the fundamental lack of progress elsewhere.

Like smoking or golf, homosexuality is a great leveller. That doesn’t mean every gay City worker is a member of a LGBT network — the bias still leans towards the younger, lower-grade employees.

Nor does it mean the closet is empty. No matter how mainstream homosexuality becomes in society, some will choose not to come out. Fine. That’s their prerogative. I still know a couple of closeted gays in the most outrageously camp profession of all: fashion design.

But is homophobia still tearing through the City, as Lord Browne says? This may have been the case when he first started out 40 years ago but gay people in the Square Mile are no longer working in a climate of fear and recrimination.

We’re lucky enough to live in a largely meritocratic society — a society in which everyone has their own individual hang-ups and prejudices. A society in which we still face many difficult problems. But homophobia is not one of them.