Still a glass ceiling for women solicitors?

In an interview last year in the Herald, Heather Gibbings, the first woman to hold the post of convener of the Law Society of Scotland’s Guarantee Fund Committee, told the interviewer that she believed that there is no ‘invisible glass ceiling’ in law in Scotland that prevents women from reaching the most senior positions.

We would certainly agree that a substantial number of exceptional women in Britain are moving into the higher echelons of the profession, and the general public is now familiar with the names of stellar women like Helena Kennedy and Cheri Blair. However, despite the fact that 20% of Advocates in Scotland are now women, only 7% of Q.Cs are women, and as Heather Gibbings herself acknowledged  ‘not many (women) at the moment are senior or managing partners’. Ms Gibbings believes that it is only a matter of time before this position is rectified because more than half of the graduate output of most law faculties in Scotland is now female. However, based on a recent study we have carried out, we believe that women solicitors still suffer handicaps compared to their male peers.

Our findings are part of a larger research project that was concerned with work-life balance in five professions: architecture, dentistry, law (at the level of solicitors) and general practice in medicine and nursing. The research was carried out throughout the central belt of Scotland using both questionnaires and in-depth interviews. Altogether we interviewed 675 professionals of whom 32 were male and 30 were female solicitors. A further 313 professionals, of whom 82 were male and 42 were female solicitors, completed questionnaires.

One of our major findings was that, in comparison, to the other professions we looked at, the lawyers were more likely to believe that women in their profession suffered from discrimination.  Overall, 55% of lawyers said they thought there was a glass ceiling as compared to 50% of nurses, 46% of architects, 23% of GPs and 20% of dentists. Further, 58% of lawyers interviewed (as compared to 43% of other professionals) thought promotion favoured men. It was also noticeable that there was more divergence about these matters between the views of men and women, in the case of lawyers, than there was in the other four professions. Specifically, 43% of women lawyers compared to 28% of men lawyers thought recruitment in their profession favoured men, whereas in the case of the other professions, 32% of women compared to 23% of men thought this was the case.  

Questionnaire respondents were also asked: ‘with respect to promotional prospects in your profession, do you think that gender, in general, is an issue?’ As with the interview findings, in the case of both sexes, law respondents were more likely to say that promotion favoured men: in the case of male respondents, 50% of lawyers compared to 40% of other professionals and in the case of women, 76% of lawyers compared to 38% of other respondents.

These numerical results tallied well with comments from our lawyer interviewees.  For example, one woman solicitor commented: ‘We’ll know we’ve made it when there are mediocre women in senior positions as God knows there are enough mediocre men there.  Women always have to be exceptional at everything to get there.  Why, if they are equal at the start?  Do women suddenly become incompetent at a certain level in a bizarre and unexplained way?’

Our interviews suggested that our lawyers believed that the sources of gender inequity in law were threefold  – networking, child care issues and vestiges of sexism.

Networking

Networking, in particular, was regarded as an area where women lawyers are professionally handicapped. Responses to the questionnaire indicated that 56% of the men and 93% of the women believed that there are informal networks which operate to the advantage of men, while only 18% of both sexes thought there were analogous networks for women. Interestingly, women lawyers were considerably more likely than other women professionals in the questionnaire sample to consider that there were informal networks advantaging men (93% compared to 44%).

The findings from the interviews reinforced the questionnaire data. Half of both sexes interviewed believed that women were either excluded from informal networks, or that such networks were less accessible to females.  While some of the exclusions were seen as explicit, for example Rotary clubs and some golf clubs, in other cases the exclusion was more implicit in that it was suggested that women would either not be included in certain events or would feel less comfortable. As one male solicitor put it:  ‘Simple things like going down to the pub on a Friday night is easier for a man than a woman’.   

Furthermore, it seemed from our interviews that most corporate hospitality took place at traditionally masculine events e.g. motor racing, football etc. to which females were either not invited, or were very much in the minority.  A particularly extreme example of this was mentioned by a female partner in her early thirties who described situations where woman colleagues had been out with clients and ‘they (the clients) all want to go to the Fantasy Bar (lap dancing) and obviously that means you’re immediately excluded... I mean that’s not a glass ceiling but obviously it makes it more difficult to do your job and get on, as obviously relating to clients is important’.

Child rearing issues

Throughout the interviews, children and childbearing were frequently mentioned as acting as a barrier for women in law. Children were seen as problematic for a woman’s progression in three ways.  First, at the interview stage, when some employers took account of a woman’s potential to have children and consequently her likelihood of seeking maternity leave. Second, after childbirth, when there was sometimes an assumption that a woman would reduce her working hours. Finally, it was argued that there was also, on occasion, an expectation that after childbirth women would have different priorities and be less committed to their employment.

Some older male partners quite openly discussed how the difficulties of maternity leave and career breaks discouraged them from employing women.  For example, one male partner, who had earlier claimed that there was equality in the profession, said: ‘Promotion.  That I think is slower, and the awful thing is, it’s because of maternity allowances. And when we come to the firm we’ve got about three off this year which gives us nightmares, especially if they’re in very individual positions like cashiers … if it’s a partner or a cashier it’s a very crucial role which has to be covered so I think prejudice does arise’.

However, some women solicitors without children took a similar position. For example, a childless woman partner in her early fifties, claimed that her life was dedicated to work:  ‘If you want to be a partner at this level you’ve got to devote your time to that and I don’t think it’s fair to think you can leave it for four years until your children are at primary school.. and male partners are justified I think by saying let’s not take the girl because we’re going to have to cover her work load.’

Our study clearly showed that child birth and child rearing can inhibit women’s progress. Similarly, it appeared women solicitors took more responsibility for children and were far more involved in domestic duties than their male peers. Further, while two-thirds of our respondents said that male solicitors’ working lives were unlikely to be affected by the advent of children, none of our respondents thought this was the case for women solicitors. The following quotes, all from women lawyers, demonstrate this forcibly:

‘The numbers of female partners, compared to partners is minimal and that is largely the demands of the job.  If you have a family, like I have, it’s a guilt trip the whole time’

‘Well, you have...far more commitments, there is no doubt that if you are a working mother you are juggling home life and work life and whilst I think a lot of men do help and contribute a lot, at the end of the day the primary care rests with the mother in, I would certainly say 90% of the cases, the primary burden of managing the home and the household and the work rests with the mother.’

Sexism

Only a minority of our respondents thought that male solicitors were explicitly sexist and only a few, older women reported any personal experience of sexism. An example of this was the woman who told us about a recruitment interview she had had after a career break. The senior partner interviewing her had said: ‘we know that you are just a housewife trying to become a solicitor again’. She continued: ‘that’s a direct quote. If that’s not sexist I don’t know what is... I must say that’s unusual most people are fine.’

In general, the lawyers interviewed believed that sexism as explicit as this, was on the wane, though some referred to aspects of sexual politics that operated differentially for women solicitors. For example, one woman solicitor said: ‘I think there’s a definite attempt to have a sort of equal playing field in that respect. I just don’t think it works because in the legal profession, I mean I won’t go into whether it’s right or wrong … but you do have men interviewing women and they’ll say “Oh I like the look of that” I mean they’re quite honest about it and you’ll have partners who’ll have affairs with their trainees.. so it’s, I mean women who come for interviews are not necessarily looked on dispassionately... If they’re nicer looking they’ll get the chance of getting through some doors.’

Recommendations for change

In our final report on this research we made the following six general recommendations which we believe could improve work life balance in all the five professions we looked at:

• Changing the prevailing long hour culture, e.g. the attitudes that reinforce the exemption of certain groups of professional workers from the 48 hour week.
• Examining the prevalence of ‘presenteeism’, i.e. the notion that employees compete to be seen to be working long hours in the belief that employers regard hours spent at work as an index of productivity and commitment to work.
• Breaking down the dichotomy between full and part-time work whereby the former is linked to permanent employment, better prospects of promotion, greater job stability and commitment to a career, and the latter is associated with temporary employment and less committed attitudes.
• Changing attitudes to career breaks by, for example, linking people on career breaks to their profession through free or subsidised CPD courses.
• Reinforcing EO policy statements with the setting of targets for the recruitment and promotion of women and with family friendly policies including job sharing and proportional working.
• Challenging the assumption that it is only mothers who should take part-time employment or career breaks.

In relation specifically to the legal profession we suggest the following:

• Monitor trends in the number of women in senior positions as our research indicates that relatively few women become senior partners in practices.  
• Offer parental leave, career breaks, job sharing and part-time employment to both men and women to encourage true equality of opportunity.  This will require both financial and policy changes within the profession.
• Discourage the long hours culture. Presenteeism needs to be challenged by senior managers and partners rather than expected by them as a demonstration of work commitment.
• Consider the value for women of professional networks, particularly as this research demonstrated women are currently excluded from some of the traditional networks.
• It is our hope that the findings and recommendations summarised in this article will help to speed up the complete elimination of glass ceiling effects for women solicitors in Scotland.