The Gay-Friendly Places to Work

By PAUL B. BROWN
Published in Wall Street Journal: December 2, 2006
AFTER decades in which discrimination and harassment were routine, U.S. financial firms have become more gay-friendly than those in any other industry, according to the Washington-based Human Rights Campaign,” Bloomberg Markets reports.
In writing about the annual ranking of the Human Rights Campaign, a civil rights organization dedicated to achieving gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality, Lisa Kassenaar notes that 19 financial service companies received a 100 percent score. “The banking and financial services industry has moved well out in front of the others,” said Daryl Herrschaft, director for the Human Rights Campaign Workplace Project, which conducted the study.
Wall Street chief executives told the magazine that the gay-friendly policies were simply good business: they help them recruit the best talent in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
And, of course, supporting gay employees could help financial services companies with customers as well. Ms. Kassenaar notes that gays and lesbians will have about $675 billion in disposable personal income in 2007.
As J. P. Morgan Chase’s chief executive, James Dimon, put it, “We serve a lot of people in different cultures and locations and we need to reach out to all of them.”