Goldman Sachs offers free gender reassignment surgery to employees

[bananafish81]

Saw this article in the Guardian

Goldman Sachs offers London staff emergency nannies

Gist of the article is that Goldman Sachs is trying to cut its gender pay gap and has introduced a number of measures to support its commitment to try and retain female staff, and increase the number of women in senior roles to at least 30% by 2023

• on-site childcare
• emergency nannies to look after unwell children and dependent family members with mobility issues (20 days of in-home care per child or dependent each year, for £4 an hour)
• a programme to ship mothers’ breast milk home to their children if they have to work overseas
• free IVF treatments

But buried amongst these employee benefits is “free gender reassignment surgery”

So, looks like one means by which Goldman can reach their targets of women in senior leadership roles is by encouraging male employees to transition. Job done.

(Then again, Pips Bunce didn’t need surgery to win a women in business award…)

As predicted by Private Eye.

The pay gap isn't the same as pay inequality - it's the gap insofar as there aren't enough women represented at senior level

Women can get paid equally with their male colleagues, but the issue is there aren't enough very senior women full stop.

If there aren't many women at board level then overall the average salary of a woman at GS will be less than the average salary of a man at GS, because there are fewer women at the top levels (because in part long hours cultures are so desperately family unfriendly)

However getting more women into the c-suite through transition isn't exactly what the bodies like the 30% club had in mind

my work will pay for childcare / care for others the employee has caring responsibilities for up to a certain amount per year

I used it regularly > they'd send a nanny from a local agency to cover when I needed to travel for work

it's a great perk TBH

Imagine how interested I was when I found out that

not only had none of my male colleagues with similar age children ever used it
none of them were even aware of it!!!!!!

Gender pay gap is more about workforce profile than salary

EHRC - What is the difference between the gender pay gap and equal pay?

November 8th cartoon:
www.telegraph.co.uk/business/alex/

It's a nice idea for older kids but I'd never leave 16 month old DS with a complete stranger, nor would any other parent I know! Shipping breast milk is good, I doubt there'll be much take-up but it would've helped me when DH took Shared Parental Leave and DS didn't react well to formula.

The gender surgery thing is bolleaux, how the fuck does that help them retain women? Although again, I doubt there'll be much take-up since the vast majority of TW keep their rod and tackle.

You don't have to take it up Havelock -

but it is there if you want to.

My one covers holiday clubs and stuff as well which is pretty cool.

I agree it's more suitable for older kids >

As long as the company doesnt start saying well you have this cover so you can't refuse
Which didn't happen at our work but I can imagine might be a risk generally.

Anyway that's not what the thread is about!

Do they offer to pay for surgery as part of their employee healthcare package generally -
Or is this a special thing

Their virtue signalling will be well rewarded, transwomen being renowned for being satisfied with having their demands met, and would never dream of asking for more and more.

Well, it solves the gender equality problem if men transition to transwomen. It does not solve the sex equality problem. That is not a progressive policy to solve the pay gap, it is to solves it on paper.
And makes it harder for women.
I don’t know why this surprises me - it is just another way of keeping mainly men in the boardroom.

I don't have a problem with this. If they're offering medical assistance to those who want to be parents I don't have an issue with them offering medical assistance to those who want to transition.

I don't have a problem with this set of policies as long as they collect meaningful data about the impacts of them and don't fall down the "TWAW therefore count towards our senior female headcount" rabbit hole

Oh this is crap

From the explaining away and excusing and obfuscation I’ve heard in relation to the gender of gap by various organisations, I would imagine that counting trans women as women for the purposes of those statistics would be exactly what they would like to do.

My understanding is that they have provided partial coverage for gender reassignment surgery for years. I have no problem with this, but I would like to know how GS ensures that their gender pay gap data doesn't get distorted, because surely they can't think that transitioning males who have progressed to executive roles as men should be counted as women?

1. Surgery is not a pre requisite to change gender legally
2. Gender pay gap (govt stats) uses self declared gender so absolutely companies will count anyone who ticks woman, as woman. I have no idea what they are going to do with all the non binary people...

offering assistance with medical stuff makes no difference whatsoever to stats is what I'm trying to say

Obviously companies will be keen for execs to tick female as it sorts the stats out.

And you can tick female and be counted on equality stats as such with no requirement to change name, clothes, anything.

I mean they could quietly ask some blokes to do it, blokes can carry on as usual having ticked box, no one needs to know as personal info

Job done

Do you think they think they all want surgery?

I think they know they don't so it looks good for low cost

Oh good point!