Skip to main content

Profession should be re-engineered to help women reach the top (2008)

Sex Discrimination

Click here to return to the Articles and Opinion Pieces Index

Profession should be re-engineered to help women reach the top

Author: Elizabeth Broderick

Publication: The Australian (Fri 8 Feb 2008)


Twenty years ago, I spent many an hour debating how we might change the face of the profession and open up careers for women on an equal basis with men.  Many believed that the sheer force of numbers of women would lead to more equal leadership within the profession.  Looking at the number of women partners in firms now, it is clear that these debates are still relevant today. 

Personal, organisational and societal factors come into play throughout any career but for female lawyers, many of whom have significant caring responsibilities, these factors have a disproportionate impact at critical decision making times.

One of these times is on entry to the profession. Another is on promotion to Senior Associate - usually around the late 20’s, - and then, of course, there are the years of “slow burn” wondering whether the long hours, the interference with caring responsibilities and sometimes unrecognised extreme effort is worthwhile.

Many of the challenges have existed for as long as women have entered the profession; others have emerged with globalisation and changing demographic expectations. Understanding the internal and external pressures facing female lawyers is the first step towards firms and individual lawyers being able to anticipate and manage careers in a way that works for individual lawyers, both women and men, and the industry.

On graduation from law school, which is often the entry point into the profession, the playing field is level. Selection is merit-based and as nearly 70 percent of law graduates are female, many are entering law firms and corporate legal departments where they are trained and developed for future success.

Indeed the excellent training and development of new lawyers in Australia gives them the option of following alternative career paths either locally or globally in banking, management consulting, business or academia. This is the first organisational challenge: How can law firms make a legal career (culminating in partnership) stand out for women amongst the plethora of available options?

Part of the answer lies in establishing diverse role models and good mentoring relationships. It’s about nurturing the next generation of partner talent. It’s not so easy when nearly 70 percent women lawyers at the entry level amounts to 20 percent (maximum) at the partner level (even less when one counts only equity partners).

The reality is that law is a demanding job. The majority of men and women experience difficulties balancing work and family, but the specific pressures in the legal profession make the job of reaching partner status even tougher for female lawyers.

It is at the next career point that the most complex and difficult challenges emerge. While firms do their best to attract, develop and retain female talent (and many do it well until the Senior Associate promotion point), it is the timing of this next career stage - the late 20s - that challenges many. At this point some women lawyers look ahead, and even if they are not yet contemplating starting a family, they begin to question the value of a career where tight deadlines stretch and commitment never ends. A career where juggling work and broader life priorities becomes a critical skill for success. A career where work has intensified and time away from work decreased.  And where the search for work life balance is never ending.

The problem for law firms is a catch 22 situation - if they can’t adapt to retain more women and stem the flow in those critical mid-career years, they must then recruit from a junior pool that is increasingly female. The problem is not just going to correct itself with a focus on recruitment or time – it needs some serious re-engineering at its very core.

How do you create an environment that is conducive to retaining women and increasingly men? Access to high quality part-time work is vital, and must go beyond squashing a six day a week job into three and a half days. Quality part-time work should be an option for women and men at all levels of the organisation including in equity partner roles.  There must be supports in place: paid maternity leave, study support, leave of absence, strong mentoring and role models who represent the diversity of men and women’s choices. Creating such an environment requires confronting significant barriers over which most firms have little or no control: deeply held prejudices about women's roles in families, lack of affordable, quality child and elder care, and residual government policies steeped in 1950's economic ideology.

The elephant in the room is working hours. Everyone knows that long hours are one of the main reasons many, and not just women, leave law. Some will say that the extended hours are a direct result of client demands but they are also a result of unmanaged expectations and insufficient job redesign. Whilst there is no doubt that a number of the leading transactional roles cannot be performed in a flexible work arrangement, these roles are in the minority.

Within firms we need to broaden the understanding of these issues and the responsibility for bringing our most capable people through regardless of gender. This will include measuring in a systematic manner how we are going at all levels of the firm in terms of gender equality.

We need our male and female leaders to work together to put in place targeted programs to address these barriers. Such programs need to not only focus on the individual case, but address team and organisation-wide systems that can crush individual efforts to work more flexibly. We also need to measure progress (the cleverest firms are starting to do this well and will prosper in the 21st century).

The broader point is that women lawyers, like all women, need explicit support from their partners, families and the government. These issues were explored in detail by my predecessor in the HREOC report released earlier this year, It’s About Time: Women, men, work and family.

Careers are rarely made or derailed by a single decision. The career outcomes for most women are the result of thousands of small decisions they make every day. In a highly competitive labour market, remuneration should be but one part of the ‘total package’.  For working women and men, having the flexibility to attend your child’s soccer final or their first school recital may be ‘priceless’.  For employers, this flexibility may be the key to securing competitive advantage.

The challenge is to ensure that these lawyers, and all working women and men, have the ability to care for those they love whilst optimising the very valuable skills they have to build our economy and our community.