"Girlfriends of the Court"

Archive for the ‘maternity’ Category

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After 20 years, do the numbers stack up?

In Advocacy, Barristers, Career, Education, Hegemony, maternity, Solicitors, women on December 5, 2012 at 1:26 pm
What do we have to do to make a difference? *

What do we have to do to make a difference? *

Nearly twenty years ago, the Australian Law Reform Commission, in its report “Equality before the Law: Women’s Equality (ALRC Report 69 Part 2)” examined the place of  Women in the Legal Profession, and said

Women make up 50% of law school graduates, and 25% of the legal profession as a whole. However, women leave the profession at a much higher rate than men, and they are clustered in the lower ranks of the profession. [footnotes omitted]

Fast forward two decades and the VEOHRC has released its latest report into research on women in the law, entitled  Changing the rules: The experiences of female lawyers in Victoria.  This report focused on discrimination, sexual harassment and the accommodation of parental and carer responsibilities.  Read the rest of this entry »

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Women partners: the glass half full or half empty

In Barristers, Career, maternity, Solicitors, women on July 8, 2011 at 11:33 am

In its annual survey of women partners, the Australian reports that one third of new partners are women here. The numbers of women making partnership are steadily on the rise. The Australian also reports that ‘family proves no obstacle to career’, with firms increasingly accommodating the needs of lawyers with young families without requiring them to sacrifice their career aspirations. Great news it seems.

But …

Compare the insightful opinion piece by Roy Williams  here, which questions the compatibility of the values of the modern legal workplace with the aspirations of many young lawyers.

In blunt terms: an Australian commercial law firm is no longer, for most lawyers, an enjoyable place to work

He concludes with 4 propositions, the final one is that rather than a ‘maternity wall’  women use their ‘common sense’ to bail out via a ‘maternity escape-hatch’.

Do you agree?