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march 2006

Insights into How Another Profession Is Addressing the Issue of Retaining Women in the Workplace

Thank you for the introduction, and thank you for asking me to address you at this breakfast session.

An inescapable fact is that women have or do play an important part in all our lives. Whether they be mother, sister, partner, lover or professional colleague.

Its in the respect of woman as professionals that I have been asked to address you today. In particular to speak about women in the legal profession and the issue of retaining women in the workplace. The retention of women in the workplace is not a new topic. I can recall for example addressing some 25 years ago a group of representatives of multinational engineering companies in Taiwan on precisely that topic.

To introduce our topic, I will give you a description of what the situation may look like for women in the legal practice.

Hundreds of feet above Wellington Harbour, the reception area of a large firm boasts all of the muscular, streamlined ornamentation that symbolises authority and power in a big city law firm – modern art, contemporary furniture, white marble floors, high ceilings. Background music and stunning views provide a special ambience, setting the stage for the new professional lives of talented, ambitious lawyers.

The scene feels and looks like the setting for Grisham’s book ‘The Firm’, where like the devil in the ‘Dr Faustus’ Legend’, the firm demands and devours body and soul.

We can picture a forty-year-old woman specialist in Employment law has spent more than two decades in the firm navigating the professional achievements and the intellectual and social cross currents of life in the firm, on her way to the legal world's most lucrative prize: a partnership.

Her corner office has evidence of hard work: stacks of legal documents scattered on her desk and floor. She wants a partnership in order to be recognised. However, if she achieves such recognition, she will be an anomaly. The fact is that only 18% of law firm partners in New Zealand are women.

Although our law schools have been graduating classes that are almost evenly split between men and women, and although firms are absorbing new associates in numbers that largely reflect that balance, we know that something odd happens to most of the women who make it into the profession.

After they begin to climb into the upper echelons of law firms, they disappear. In the last ten years the number of women practitioners have risen from 27% to 39% of all legal practitioners, yet women account for only 18% of partners.

Even those who have made it to the top of their profession will confirm what available data indicates: namely that women's legal careers involve distinct, often insurmountable, hurdles and that those hurdles remain misunderstood and under-examined.

There is a certain percentage of the population, women, significantly motivated to go through law school with a certain career goal in mind, yet they disappear before achieving that goal. What happens? And why does it happen? The first step in answer to the question is to find out.

For years, only one response was offered: it was said that time would set things straight – that once there were substantially equal numbers of male and female law school graduates, they would enter the professional pipeline in similarly equal numbers, this would fuel gender diversity and correct the overall gender imbalance within legal firms and, in time, correspondingly equalise the partnership mix. Yet, although equalisation has occurred at the point of graduation, and women increasingly predominate as ‘top scholars’, gender disparity has persisted in the top positions within law firms and the judiciary.

Although women certainly leave firms to become actively involved in child-rearing, recent surveys indicate that female lawyers often feel pushed into that all-or-nothing situation. Many, if not most, would prefer to maintain their careers while raising a family, if the system encouraged and allowed them to do so. Many woman who have left law firms say that having children isn’t the primary reason they leave the practise of law. Most identify the reason for departure as the attraction of other careers or, at least, different ways and environments in which to practise law. The problem seems to lie in ‘the firm’ as a central institution within the legal profession.

Women lawyers are a good investment for any firm. Firms want women to stay. Men want women to stay. Women want to stay. So why are they leaving?

The reason appears to be the unfulfilled professional need to advancement and incentives for retention. Problems with advancement and retention are not grounded in some general notion of gender discrimination; they are grounded in personal bias, prejudice and self interest. None of these makes good business sense.

With law firms now working with major corporations that demand diversity of their advisors, and with women increasingly dominating the top tiers of law school graduates, the promotion of women's legal careers is not just a matter of good will – it is also a winning business strategy. If you want to run a successful business, you need good talented people, the best you can secure, reward and retain. To bypass or underestimate women as a key factor in the investment strategy of your firm is to constrain your business planning options, or, at worst, to place your business at risk.

When I enrolled in law school in the 1970s, I was 1 of 3 women in a class of 700. Now, more like 50% of that class would be women. In the past, women like myself did manage to penetrate the profession even though it was still largely enmeshed in discriminatory hiring practices. Women practitioners were rare, and women had to seize opportunities that could be taken for granted by their male counterparts.

Today, even with the increased presence of women, men continue to enjoy distinct advantages. These are largely guaranteed by the mere fact that in most firms more men than women hold power, influence and leverage.

Women enjoy less access to the wider opportunities that are used for networking and informal business development – for instance, to play golf or go to the rugby, to sit on the pub quiz team or have a regular Friday night drinking school. There’s nothing wrong with these social activities – apart from the fact that they’re entrenched in a social pattern from a bygone age, and that males gain greater benefit from them. Where are the equivalent forums, equally socially enjoyable, that would not only support professional networking and business opportunities for women lawyers with young families, but be recognised as equally legitimate within the profession?

One answer, though it is usually workplace based, is mentoring. Women are often not well mentored. Within the workplace, high-achieving male lawyers are more easily identified for mentoring and career support than women. This is because other males are in the positions to identify and support them.

A 52 year old woman partner in an English law firm wrote a book called "Ending the Gauntlet: Removing the Barriers to Women's Success in the Law". In this book she identified key areas in which action was necessary for better advancement for women in the legal profession. These were mentoring, network opportunities, higher-grade assignments and better access to key management committees.

From other sources have come other suggestions for improving the lot of women lawyers. These include the transformation of old institutionalised-style organisations into modern, innovative, flat-structured organisations with flexible working arrangements. The emphasis need to be on collaboration and recognition based on factors other than the capacity to generate billable hours.

Deloitte Touche Ross, the big multinational accounting firm, is amongst the more innovative firms. It has promoted and retained women by offering flexible working schedules, leadership development, career planning programmes, transparent and dedicated mentoring, all strengthened by strong internal support and emphasis on the bottom-line merits of its policies. The firm also has generous sabbatical policies and outreach practices so that women who depart for the purpose of child-rearing have an easier time re-entering the workforce.

The New Zealand Law Society too has taken certain initiatives. In 1994 it established an advisory body, the Women’s Consultative Group, to provide a forum for discussion on issues that impact on women in the legal profession. The role of this group is to:

• improve the status and position of women in the profession
• promote their advancement and retention
• increase their influence in decision making at all levels
• promote women’s interests within the legal system
• act as a consultative group to the NZ Law Society.

To date, the group has conducted a survey of society members, both men and women on these matters and, on the basis of survey findings, has set up a work plan. The main finding of the survey was the need to make it easier for women to balance their careers with child rearing. As part of the work plan the group is promoting a tax rebate for child care, reduction of the Law Society levy for part-time workers, and resources for networking.

In summary, it is a costly loss when women leave a profession. All organisations benefit from having a diverse workforce representing a range of talent and experience and different points of view. If we are to develop smart, professional businesses which value the next generation of professional women, the glass ceiling needs to be smashed.

Thank you, and good luck with your panel and workshops.

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Disclaimer: This article is necessarily brief and general in nature. You should seek professional advice before taking any action in relation to the matters dealt with in this publication. Please refer to our Legal Notices.

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