Financial Times Report Finds EY & PwC UK struggling to Meet Targets for Women's Representation

By: WE Staff | Thursday, 30 January 2025

• New Report finds EY & PwC running off track on meeting their targets
• These two are unable to meet women’s proportion targets in UK wings

Most recently in January, a report has been published by Financial Times that suggests 2 amongst the biggest players in the professional services sector of UK are behind schedule in hitting their targets, specifically for females who are newly entering in their partnerships.

The report has also found that UK wings of EY and PwC are currently running off track in meeting their targets for proportion of females in their respective partnerships while on the other side, the Big Four rivals KPMG and Deloitte are completely on target for meeting their own goals.

Considering today’s problems, diversity has become an increasingly importance issue for businesses globally, within the boardroom. This is happening both in terms of business case, compliance, wider social trends for inclusive work practices. Those women who are serving in the board roles holds the ability to act as role models in order to encourage other women out there, to take part in the realm of business while aiding firms to notice where their weak points are, significantly in assisting more women into senior roles.

However, the progress is not that fast and there is a real danger in UK economy’s certain sectors that businesses could be rowing back against their diversity efforts of the past 10 years.

The reports says that EY and PwC are on the verge to miss the targets of 2025 for UK’s female partner representation since the Big Four accounting firms are struggling to boost women’s proportion sufficiently in their upper ranks. Financial times states that current data shows EY has hit only 28 percent till now while its UK arm sets Big Four’s most ambitious goal which aims at 40 percent of women in its partnership by 2025. On the other hand, PwC is still 3 percent shy from its more modest 30 percent of target for this year.