Swipe right for gender parity? Visibility, work culture, and inequality in the Scottish legal profession

Dr Temi Odusanya examines visibility, work culture and inequality in the Scottish legal profession.

Introduction

The metaphor of ‘swiping right’ for gender parity is deliberate. Like dating platforms, contemporary professional systems rely on visibility, signalling and optimisation. They present themselves as neutral while often reproducing structural advantage. This raises a central question for the Scottish legal profession: has entry‑level gender parity translated into senior institutional power?

In recent years, the Scottish legal profession has increasingly framed gender equality as a project already well underway. Professional reports, diversity strategies and recruitment statistics emphasise that women now constitute at least half of law graduates and trainee solicitors in Scotland. This data has supported a prevailing assumption: that gender inequality is largely transitional, and that time, coupled with fair recruitment, will resolve remaining imbalances. This narrative becomes less convincing as legal careers unfold.

Despite sustained parity at entry, women remain underrepresented in senior positions where authority and influence are exercised, including law firm partnerships, senior advocacy and higher judicial office. Data published by professional and appointing bodies in Scotland consistently shows a sharp divergence between early‑career representation and senior leadership outcomes.

It is worth noting ‘gender parity’ is used to refer not only to numerical balance at entry, but to equality in progression and institutional power.

The disjunction raises questions about how progress is measured. A dominant focus on recruitment risks obscuring the systems that govern progression. Contemporary legal practice increasingly relies on quantified indicators of performance, productivity and commitment. While these systems appear objective, they are shaped by particular assumptions about availability, continuity and the ‘ideal’ legal career.

More than five decades after the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 prohibited sex discrimination in employment and following the consolidation of equality protections under the Equality Act 2010, gender equality in law is rightly treated as a settled legal principle. Nonetheless, the persistence of inequality within the legal profession itself raises questions not about the adequacy of the law, but about how professional power and progression are structured in practice. It is this gap, between formal legal equality and lived professional outcomes, that this article examines, asking whether the profession has truly ‘swiped right’ on equality, or merely on its appearance.

From pipeline to platform: how legal careers are evaluated today

For decades, gender imbalance in senior legal roles has been explained through the ‘pipeline’ model, which assumes that equal entry will, over time, produce equal outcomes. In Scotland, this account initially appeared plausible. Women have been well represented in legal education and training for several decades. However, pipeline narratives depend on assumptions that no longer reflect professional reality. They assume career progression is linear, transparent and primarily merit‑based.

Contemporary legal careers are instead shaped by evaluative systems that resemble platforms rather than ladders. Progression is increasingly mediated through billable‑hour targets, client‑origination metrics, utilisation rates and digitally monitored performance indicators. These systems function as proxies for availability, responsiveness and visibility. While they appear neutral, they reflect particular expectations about work patterns and professional commitment. As in other sectors, metrics prioritise continuous presence and uninterrupted paths. When flexible working or career interruption alters visibility, formal performance indicators may decline even when competence and contribution remain strong.

The mid‑career moment: where parity slows

Gender inequality in Scottish legal practice becomes most pronounced at the mid‑career stage. This is the point at which progression decisions acquire enduring significance and informal sponsorship becomes gradually influential. Importantly, women are not leaving the profession at disproportionate rates. Instead, many experience career deceleration. They remain within firms, chambers and institutions, but fall out of contention for partnership, senior advocacy or leadership roles. This pattern reflects structured stagnation rather than attrition.

Quantified performance measures play a role in this process. Reduced hours, portfolio careers or remote working, often adopted to manage caring responsibilities, can negatively affect metrics used in promotion assessments. In this context, flexibility supports retention while simultaneously limiting advancement. Equality persists in presence, but not in progression.

Visibility, bias and digital presenteeism

The post‑pandemic expansion of hybrid working raised expectations of improved inclusion across the legal profession. Flexible arrangements reduced long‑standing barriers associated with rigid working patterns and physical co‑presence. Yet hybrid work has also intensified reliance on digital signals of availability. Responsiveness to email, participation in virtual meetings and extended working hours increasingly function as informal indicators of commitment. At the same time, sponsorship and informal mentoring, often decisive for advancement, remain easier to cultivate through physical proximity.

 The result is a form of digital presenteeism. Systems reward frequency and immediacy rather than depth or quality of contribution. Those most able to maintain constant visibility are assumed to be most committed. Where women are more likely to engage in flexible working, these dynamics can quietly reproduce unequal outcomes despite formal inclusion.

Representation without power

A central challenge in assessing gender parity is distinguishing representation from power. Scottish legal practice may appear balanced in aggregate statistics while remaining unequal in influence and authority. Junior representation does not automatically translate into leadership. Decision‑making power over clients, strategy, appointments and institutional direction remains unevenly distributed.

 Without attention to who advances, who is sponsored and who decides, equality risks becoming symbolic rather than substantive. This distinction matters not only for fairness but for legitimacy. Legal institutions shape public trust and the administration of justice. A profession that appears equal while operating unequally risks undermining confidence in its own normative commitments.

Algorithms are not the enemy, but they are not neutral

It would be misleading to depict technology itself as the cause of inequality. Performance systems do not operate independently of professional judgement. They formalise decisions about what is measured, rewarded and valued. The risk lies in mistaking objectivity for fairness. Quantitative metrics can obscure the conditions under which performance is produced. When progression decisions rely heavily on data without contextual evaluation, inequality becomes more difficult to interrogate precisely because it appears rational and evidence‑based.

 For Scottish legal employers, this raises practical questions: which behaviours are rewarded through performance systems? Which working patterns are treated as normative? How are mentoring, leadership and institutional contribution valued alongside measurable output?

Institutional responses and their limits

Scottish legal institutions have not been passive. Equality and diversity are firmly embedded within professional governance, and public‑facing commitments reflect sustained institutional engagement. Yet persistent disparities at senior levels indicate that formal commitment alone is insufficient. The difficulty lies not in policy absence, but in the translation of equality norms into systems governing progression, sponsorship and recognition. Intervention has focused more on access than advancement.

 Data transparency poses an additional challenge. Inconsistent reporting on progression patterns, leadership composition and pay limits accountability. Without systematic evidence of who advances, responsibility for inequality remains diffuse.

Rethinking what merit looks like

If gender parity is to move beyond surface‑level balance, Scottish legal practice must revisit its conception of merit. Merit is not fixed; it is shaped by professional norms and institutional design. Reform does not require abandoning measurement but contextualising it. Flexible careers should not be interpreted as diminished ambition. Leadership potential should not be inferred solely from availability. Sponsorship should not depend on informal inheritance. The challenge is therefore not technological, but conceptual: whether the profession is willing to examine the systems it trusts most.

Conclusion

Gender parity in Scottish legal practice is not illusory; it remains incomplete. Genuine progress has been made at the entry level and in formal institutional commitment. Nonetheless, beneath these gains lies a more complex reality shaped by contemporary work culture, algorithmic evaluation and enduring assumptions about leadership.

The lingering question is whether the Scottish legal profession has paused long enough to examine the terms under which equality is assessed. Without sustained attention to how careers are evaluated and advanced, parity risks remaining visible but partial, present in numbers, absent in power.

Dr Temi Odusanya is a lecturer in the School of Law and Social Sciences at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen.