Women experience more severe repercussions for misconduct in the financial advisory industry than their male counterparts, said research on the Bank of England's staff blog.

Women are 20 percent more likely to lose their jobs — and 30 percent less likely to find new employment — following an incident of misconduct compared to men, said guest writers Mark Egan, Gregor Matvos and Amit Seru. The gap is even wider in firms with few female managers.

"The financial advisory industry is willing to give male advisers a second chance, while female advisers are cast from the industry for similar or less severe missteps," the researchers said. "The effects of the gender punishment gap are costly, long-lasting, and may ultimately contribute to the glass ceiling faced by women in finance."

The academics followed the careers of 1.2 million workers in the U.S. financial advisory industry from 2005 to 2015. Offenses include customer disputes resulting in a settlement, internal company discipline, and regulatory and criminal offenses.

Men are twice as likely to be repeat offenders and engage in misconduct that is 20 percent more costly, the researchers said, meaning that the so-called punishment gap can't be explained by women's behavior being more expensive for firms. Instead, the composition of companies' management and executives seems to play a role.

Bloomberg