EY and PwC are behind on goals to promote women to partner

Half of the Big Four accounting firms’ British outposts aren’t bringing on enough women partners to meet their 2025 goals in the UK, according to the Financial Times, while the other two are falling short on their global goals.

EY, where women held 28% of equity partner roles last year, isn’t going to meet its goal of increasing that to 40% in 2025, while PwC UK reported 27% of women partners compared to its 30% goal for this year.

“KPMG and Deloitte have already met” their UK goals for women partners, the FT reported, although their percentages aren’t much better than at the other two. Women held 29% of equity partnerships at KPMG in 2023, surpassing its 2022 goal of 25%. The UK leader for women partners is Deloitte: Last year, it reported that 30% of its partners were women, “ahead of its 2025 deadline to hit that figure.”

Defending their pace, the firms have pointed to “the need to build a pipeline of candidates with sufficient experience to be promoted,” the FT reported.

For a little context: While women make up under a third of partners in the UK Big Four, women represent nearly half their employees: 348% at KPMG, 47% at Deloitte and EY, and 46% at PwC, according to UK gender pay gap data for the 2023–2024 reporting cycle.

Where it’s due. As the FT noted, it used to be even worse. At the end of the last decade, “women tend[ed] to account for less than a fifth” of partners at the UK’s Big Four branches.