Increasingly you might realise the company has a “woman-first” culture. If there are two equally capable candidates who are top performers, the female will be promoted first. This is very prevalent in internal mobility situations as well where you might realise in the top jobs, female candidates only require to meet the minimum criteria for the role to be accepted while males will be required to overcompensate for the same role to be moved forward. This is only for Analyst/Associate positions which generally is very still very junior. If females were in this position, they would be complaining that there is no gender equality. On this end, there must be controls to protect both females and males equality chances and not just conforming to social pressures to blindly give opportunities and chances to female candidates first.
For males to succeed in the company you probably need to bootlick well and play politics right to get promoted. I had a co-worker who was really close to my manager, didn’t contribute anything to the BAU tasks but was promoted twice in 2 years. They were so close such that even the spouse were friends with him. Clearly the promotion came from favouritism perspective.
Pay is not competitive and the firm is not trying to keep you. You will realise this once you start going for interviews for the same role.
