Leave These Harmful Narratives Behind to Advance Women in Law

As Women’s History Month comes to a close and we take stock in the legal field, women still only account for about 24% of law firm equity partners, despite coming into the legal profession in equal numbers to men for more than 40 years.

The data, based on a 2023 study from the National Association for Law Placement, is clear. Yet we continue to do not what is needed, but what is palatable. Pervasive narratives, whether willful or unwitting, are blocking our ability to implement real, meaningful change.

I have encountered these narratives throughout my legal career, including a decade in corporate Big Law. Though I only truly understood their spuriousness as I started to navigate being both a lawyer and a mother four years ago.

Pervasive Narrative: Women need to work on their confidence and imposter syndrome to navigate a legal career.

Response: No. Women do not need to be “fixed.” There is no individual intervention that will ever overcome the structural hurdles that were built into our system.

Our system isn’t “broken” but rather designed to work for someone who benefits from significant domestic labor at home. It’s not designed for someone who needs time and energy for the very real work of caring for and raising a child—i.e., mothers. There’s a reason why the gender pay gap is mainly a motherhood pay gap, with the gap being larger between mothers and women without children, than it is between men and women without children. Imposter syndrome has become a neat way to discount a woman’s valid feelings arising from being in a structure not built for women.

Pervasive Narrative: It’s not just moms who have it hard. There are plenty of #lawdads who coach their kids’ sports teams and want to spend dinner and bedtime with them.

Response: Sure, of course some dads also caregive. However, as is clear from the data, mothers disproportionately leave law firms and fathers stay. The “motherhood penalty,” as it’s known, shows that post-baby, men’s and women’s careers diverge significantly, with a woman’s trajectory dropping drastically in terms of compensation, earnings potential, job prospects and even ability to work. Fathers’ careers aren’t affected.

This doesn’t result from motherhood itself but rather from systems and structures that don’t allow mothers to exist as both mothers and lawyers: above all, a 24/7 all-hours work culture. This, in effect, shuts mothers out or forces them to take roles not commensurate with their education and experience. Mothers are far more likely to handle family responsibilities and the resulting physical, mental, emotional, practical, and logistical demands. In a 2023 American Bar Association study, 47% of mothers said they leave work for their children’s needs compared to 17% of fathers.

Pervasive Narrative: We’re making progress, and it’s only a matter of time.

Response: No, we’re really not. The needle is barely moving and in some metrics we’ve gone backwards. We can’t keep doing the same things and expect a different result. Projections from the ABA and other sources show, without extraordinary new efforts, we won’t find parity of women partners until 2181.

Pervasive Narrative: This is just the way it is. Change is impossible.

Response: This is the way it is because we haven’t earnestly committed to making it different. Change is always possible, as we’ve seen over the course of history.

Within our lifetimes, the federal government codified protection for working women to take unpaid maternity leave. During World War II, the necessary systems and structures were quickly established when mothers were needed to fill the troop’s jobs. For example, in the UK the number of nurseries increased from 14 to more than 1,300 in just three years. And don’t forget about how during the pandemic we all nearly instantaneously began to work remotely and remain productive, something else previously considered “impossible.”

Pervasive Narrative: There are plenty of women Big Law partners. Big Law partnership takes tremendous dedication and sacrifice and isn’t for everyone.

Response: Of course it’s true that Big Law partnership isn’t achievable for everyone and, yes, despite the challenges, some women have made it.

The obvious point, however, is that, as the data shows, it’s still a path more accessible and achievable for men. This is why we need to take transformative, not performative, actions, such as:

• Offering gender neutral parental leave; otherwise the workplace reinforces the idea that mothers are caregivers and fathers should focus on their careers without interruption
• Offering transparent alternative (non-24/7) work models, including one that offers predictability in addition to flexibility (e.g., fixed hours), as standard, so it can’t be rejected by a specific department
• Monitor and enforce not over-working, such as setting a limit on the number of hours that can be billed in a day or over a time period, which would level the playing field and improve well-being
• Mandate non-contactable holidays and periods away from work, giving time to rest and explore other aspects of life, reinforcing the idea that our careers are not linear and normalizing having career breaks for other life occurrences

These changes would be underpinned by law firm best practices, including:

• Develop a strategy, set targets, and establish a timeline for what the firm wants to achieve
• Take a hard look at the data; use gender metrics and gender statistics to measure and track the status of key factors over time
• Affirm leadership’s commitment to listen to women’s concerns and act on what they say
• Take steps to ensure there is a critical mass of women partners on key law firm committees
• Assess the impact of firm policies and practices on women lawyers
• Continue to implement implicit bias and sexual harassment training
• Provide resources to relieve pressures from family obligations that women more often face than their male colleagues

Pervasive Narrative: This isn’t hurting law firms.

Treating women as disposable assets is not a sustainable business model. With such high attrition rates of women, law firms cannot be retaining the best of 100% of their people.

When we once-and-for-all banish these narratives from our collective psyche, we can begin the real life-altering work toward a profession of true gender balance, and one in which our personal lives, including our families and health, always come first while also having fulfilling, ambitious legal careers.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law and Bloomberg Tax, or its owners.

Author Information

Megan Gray is a knowledge lawyer at Charles Russell Speechlys in London and previously worked at a large law firm in capital markets. Views expressed are her own and do not necessarily represent that of her employer.

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