By Kirstin Ridley
LONDON (Reuters) - Amanda Blanc, the CEO of insurer Aviva (LON:AV), told British lawmakers on Wednesday that physical and verbal harassment of women in financial services eclipsed other industries and that she had heard "absolutely appalling" stories.
Blanc, giving evidence to the Treasury Committee on sexism in finance, said she had posted a message on LinkedIn before appearing before lawmakers and had been "inundated" by private messages from women about "predominantly poor experiences".
"I have been in the situation where I have had a pregnancy test in one hand and a job offer in the other, and a boss who says: 'You still join'," she said.
"However, many women do not ... The women in a firm need to know there is a process for speaking up, that that process will be acted on, that everything will be investigated and that the actual person who did the (wrong) will leave the organisation, not the woman."
The oral evidence session comes against the backdrop of sexual assault and misconduct allegations against hedge fund founder Crispin Odey and officials at The Confederation of British Industry (CBI), which pitched Odey's hedge fund and the trade body into crisis. Odey has denied wrongdoing.
Lawmakers said they had been "extremely shocked" by private testimony they had also heard from women working in finance about sexual assault, harassment, bullying and a culture that allows perpetrators impunity.
Parliamentarian Angela Eagle said "a series of well-known bad apples that nobody ever does anything about" continued to operate in the industry. She did not name names.
Blanc, the "champion" of a government Women in Finance Charter initiative that is pushing for equal gender representation, said that the scale of verbal and physical abuse in finance firms surveyed last year was 10 percentage points higher than in other industries, at 43% and 28% respectively.
Perpetrators of predatory behaviour needed to leave the business, she said. The more subtle misconduct of excluding women from promotion or meetings, and snide comments that prevented them from speaking up, was often about management.
"The scope of the Charter is to get more women into senior management roles," she said. "My belief is if you have more women in senior management roles, this behaviour will go away."