The Company Behind Wall Street’s Defiant Girl Statue Is Working on Its Own Gender Diversity

The financial firm that commissioned placed a statue of a defiant girl standing in front of Wall Street’s iconic bull is working to solve its own gender disparity.

The statue was installed a day before International Women’s Day by State Street Global Advisors, a money management firm, in a bid to increase gender equality in the finance industry. The move came alongside an announcement by State Street Global Advisors’ CEO Ronald O’Hanley that the firm would pressure 3,500 companies to address gender disparities on their boards.

But, as Business Insider noted, State Street Global Advisors only has three woman on its 11-member board of directors. Those statistics do place the firm ahead of other Fortune 500 companies as a whole, where women make up, on average, only 21% of board seats. But the firm recognizes those numbers aren’t good enough yet. The leadership team at State Street Global Advisor also only has five women out of its 28 members.

“We know that we still have more work to do, especially at the top of our organization,” Anne McNally, a spokesperson for State Street Global Advisors, told Motto in a phone interview. “We have specific goals to increase gender diversity by the end of the year.”

McNally noted that the numbers are much better at non-executive levels in the company, with women making up about 47% of the entire firm. And they recently launched a strategic initiative in 2014 to address the numbers, which has already produced results, according to McNally. In 2016, 30% of new hires and 36% of executive promotions globally were women, she said.

[H/T Business Insider]