Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon: The bank hasn’t made enough progress in hiring women

• David Solomon said Goldman Sachs had made progress in hiring women, “but candidly not enough.”
• Solomon said the bank had “made progress” after it came under scrutiny for a lack of women in leadership roles.
• Goldman will announce new managing directors soon and, in turn, could shake up leadership demographics.

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said that “candidly,” the bank still has work to do when it comes to gender diversity.

When asked about the percentage of employees at the bank — which came under scrutiny last year for a dearth of women at the top — Solomon said they’d taken at least some steps in the right direction.

“We’ve made a bunch of progress, especially in the senior ranks, but candidly not enough, and we continue to be focused on creating opportunities,” Solomon said at the Economic Club of Washington on Thursday. He added that it’s a “long, long road” to get to the top of the firm, and that his training class, more than four decades ago, was 90% men.

The bank has faced scrutiny for its limited gender diversity at the top, even among its cohort of male-dominated Wall Street powerhouses. In March of 2024, the firm sent a 12-point internal memo to help senior staff communicate with clients after the Wall Street Journal reported on the bank’s lack of female leaders. Chief of Staff Russell Horwitz acknowledged in the memo that “progress has been slow” and reiterated the bank’s commitment to elevating and retaining women.

Goldman will announce its newest class of managing directors — just one rank below the partners — in early November, potentially altering the demographics of the bank’s leadership. Out of its most recent class of 608 MDs, a record 31% were women. Last year, Goldman promoted 95 people to partner, including a record 26 women.

Solomon estimated that women make up 41% of Goldman’s total workforce on Thursday, although he said he was not certain of the percentage. According to the bank’s 2023 People Strategy Report, roughly 43% of employees in the US were women.

A representative for Goldman Sachs declined to provide a percentage of female employees and referred Business Insider to its most recent partner and MD promotion cycles, and the 2023 report.

The Journal reported that approximately two-thirds of the women who were partners when Solomon became CEO in late 2018 had left or no longer held the title by March 2024, compared to just shy of half of male partners in the same time period. Other high-profile women, including Stephanie Cohen and Beth Hammack, have also left under Solomon’s tenure.