According to banking and finance industry officials’ testimony before a congressional oversight panel, banks and other financial institutions have made very little progress in increasing workforce diversity over the last ten years. This disturbing news comes despite the fact that these institutions have had dedicated workplace diversity programs in place for more than a decade.
Industry officials also speculate that the percentage of women and minorities in high level positions in banking and finance has probably been exaggerated.

A new study has found that 76 percent of global senior executives say that their companies have one or no minorities among their top five executives, despite the fact that a majority of the companies (54 percent) have implemented workplace diversity policies.

According to David Wessel of the Wall Street Journal, over the past few decades, the gap between women's wages and men's has narrowed substantially— but the gap between economic winners and losers of either gender is gradually widening.