FEATURE
UNDERSTANDING UNCONSCIOUS BIAS IN THE WORKPLACE KYM LAWRENCE, WOMEN LAWYERS ASSOCIATION (SA)
S
ince taking on the role of President of the Women Lawyers’ Association of South Australia (WLASA), one thing has become abundantly clear to me after speaking to various members of the profession - the legal profession in South Australia remains starkly segregated from a gender perspective. The recent revelations about former High Court Justice Dyson Heydon have, again, laid bare the currents swirling beneath the public face of the Australian legal system – a system dominated by men, in which women often struggle for equality. The statistics support this reality. In 2019, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency reported that the legal profession had a gender pay gap of over 25%. Barristers have the highest pay gap of any occupation. In 2017/2018, the average income for female barristers was $70,227 and for males it was $190,454 - for female lawyers it was $112,731 and for males it was $148,4871. In 2019, women made up only 25% of partners and 10% of the most senior positions. Many female lawyers have reason to ponder the frustrating inequities that still permeate the profession. While there is no doubt that some inroads have been made to addressing this direct and indirect gender discrimination, our profession continues to be plagued by issues arising from unconscious bias, sexual harassment, the gender pay gap and the attrition rates of female practitioners, to name a few. These practices are harmful to selfesteem and morale and too often result in women leaving the profession altogether. More needs to be done to shift the cultures and practices that limit women’s opportunities for career advancement and access to leadership roles. Although there are some real barriers that we must overcome, I believe that, in partnership as a profession, great strides
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can be made to resolve these issues once and for all. The WLASA has been working on a number of initiatives to address these issues. We believe that the WLASA’s ‘Charter for the Advancement of Women in the Legal Profession’ (the Charter) is one of the initiatives that has a key role to play in eradicating these barriers.
WHAT IS THE CHARTER? The purpose of the Charter is to ensure that female lawyers in the South Australian legal industry are afforded the same opportunities in their careers as their male counterparts. Despite the fact that women make up 50% of the legal profession, there remain obvious barriers to their progression within the industry. The Charter aims to eradicate those barriers by generating genuine structural and cultural change across the legal workforce and providing meaningful action to redress sexism and gender inequity across the profession. Our attention needs to shift to solving the problem itself – the attitudes, cultural norms and systemic manifestations of sexism and gender inequality that disadvantage and harm women. Signatories to the Charter are committing to ensuring that female lawyers within their organisations are provided with equal opportunity and inclusive workplace cultures. This will, in turn, favourably impact on all members of the organisation, and, by extension, have a positive impact on the South Australian legal profession as a whole. The practical ways in which the Charter will be implemented by its Signatories are as follows:1. Demonstrating leadership by implementing diversity and inclusion principles and removing gender bias,
unconscious bias and discrimination in the legal workplace; 2. Driving change by developing a culture that supports the retention of women legal practitioners and recognises their value in senior roles; 3. Implementing recruitment and promotion strategies that include gender diversity as an important consideration, including ensuring equal pay for legal graduates regardless of gender; 4. Promoting and supporting mentoring and sponsorship of women; 5. Encouraging and supporting flexible work practices to assist men and women to better balance professional and other commitments; 6. Adhering to and implementing equitable briefing policies as per the Guidelines of the Equitable Briefing Policy of the Law Council of Australia. Signatories agree to implement these strategies within 24 months of signing the Charter. Although these strategies are designed to combat a number of examples of direct and indirect discrimination that are prevalent within our profession, I have set out my thoughts below on one of the key issues that requires specific attention – unconscious bias.
UNCONSCIOUS BIAS Anti-discrimination laws have made overt declarations in favour of male employees unlawful. Consequently, leaders, recruiters and managers guard their language carefully and the real reasons and motivations for denying opportunities to women are often camouflaged. However, archaic, inaccurate beliefs still persist and include notions such as - men are more competent than women, women are not as ambitious as men or that women tend
