Women in the law: Breaking bias

ARTICLE

Women in the law: Breaking bias

By I. Stephanie Boyce, President of the Law Society of England and Wales

This year will mark the 100-year anniversary of the first woman to become a solicitor in England and Wales.

In December 1922, following the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, Carrie Morrison was the first to make it across the line, with Mary Pickup, Mary Sykes and Maud Crofts also admitted. Throughout her career, Morrison argued for changes to family law procedure and legislation, equality between the sexes and acted pro bono for people living in the East End and at Toynbee Hall – which works with people facing poverty and injustice in London.

The position has changed dramatically since 1922. The Law Society’s Annual Statistics Report 2019 found that in the year to 31 July 2019, 63.1% of new admissions were women. However, there is ongoing under-representation of women at senior levels. In the year up to 31 July 2019, there were 8,708 women partners compared with 19,322 male partners.

We are aware more needs to be done to bring women solicitors into the profession and nurture their talent, support them and ensure they progress to work in senior positions.

In 2020, the profession welcomed the news that Georgia Dawson was elected as Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s senior partner, becoming the first woman to lead a ‘magic circle’ firm. Dawson is herself vocal about creating an equal playing field for women and was the keynote speaker at our Fiona Woolf Lecture last year, where she called for an end to billable hours to improve the ecosystem and help achieve gender parity in the profession.

Gender pay gap

At the Fiona Woolf Lecture, we launched our Gender pay gap reporting: What can be learned from the 2020 snapshot? which analysed data from the 41 largest law firms in 2017 and 2020.

Gender pay gap reporting became mandatory in 2017 and since that time the legal services sector has made some steps towards gender pay parity, but there is still much more to do. The report provides some important benchmarking data and insights, meaning that workplaces and firms can assess their approaches so far and learn from their peers.

As workplaces prepare for their fifth year of gender pay gap reporting, they will be able to consider the impact the pandemic has had. There is evidence that the pandemic has disproportionately affected women’s careers, as women were more likely to have cared for their children when schools and nurseries closed during lockdown. As such, there were changes to working hours and work responsibilities, which though welcome flexibility and support from firms at the time, could also have longer term career implications.

Pay gap reporting was designed to increase transparency and in doing so to encourage action. We hope our analysis will renew focus on how we can close the gender pay gap and create a profession that is fully inclusive.

As part of this, we urge our members to sign our Women in Law Pledge, which commits them to setting high level targets to make a difference for gender equality within their organisation.

We also encourage them to engage with our Women in Leadership in Law programme, which aims to develop an international platform for women and men to discuss how to support women in leadership roles in the profession.

We find ourselves at the beginning of the New Year, which offers solicitors new challenges as well as new opportunities. I hope our members will commit to action that accelerates that progress in the next five years. ■

I. Stephanie Boyce