International women’s day: Minding the gap

It’s 50 years since two groundbreaking items of laws – the Intercourse Discrimination Act 1975 and Equal Pay Act 1970 – got here into pressure. Each acts have been designed to counter widespread and blatant discrimination in opposition to girls. The impact was to make justiciable the rights of girls to equal pay for equal work, and latterly to develop the appropriate to equal pay for work of equal worth.

The acts landed in a context the place the legislation and the authorized career itself had a poor document. There was important progress, however a lot stays to be performed.

The variety of girls coming into and remaining within the career has rocketed within the interim. Ladies have accounted for over half of practising solicitors since 2018, rising to 53% by 2023.

However that ‘horizontal’ dominance has not but translated into ‘vertical’ equality: 47% of salaried companions and 32% of full fairness companions are girls. In addition to the seniority hole, there additionally stays a big gender pay hole, particularly at elite corporations the place the skilled rewards are best. Workplace for Nationwide Statistics figures present that in 2023/24 the general gender pay hole amongst all attorneys was 17.6% – in contrast with 14.5% within the nation as a complete. For solicitors, the hole was 10%.

On the face of it, such gaps are usually not unbridgeable. However they’re much wider in most elite corporations. In 2023, the median pay hole at magic circle corporations was between 33% and 54%. The imply figures have been 18% to 58%. Alone among the many magic circle, Slaughter and Could has reverted to refusing to offer figures that embody its fairness companions.

In accordance with Bar Council analysis, in the meantime, on the self-employed bar there’s a gender pay hole at yearly of name and in each follow space.

To attempt to get an image of the advances made within the final 50 years, the Subsequent 100 Years challenge, successor to the First 100 Years initiative which charted the historical past of girls within the legislation, will start a survey asking girls attorneys for his or her expertise.

Three years in the past, the challenge, the brainchild of solicitor Dana Denis-Smith, printed analysis with Gapsquare (a part of XpertHR) that discovered 84% of girls attorneys consider they won’t see true gender pay equality of their working life. Almost a 3rd thought it will not occur within the subsequent 100 years.

The report, which analysed gender pay hole stories filed with the UK authorities, confirmed that the authorized sector, at its present charge of change, was nonetheless 86 years away from pay fairness between ladies and men.

Worryingly, notes Denis-Smith, the report additionally discovered that, whereas 92% of authorized professionals surveyed agree that the gender pay hole is a priority for them, 62% mentioned that fixing it isn’t a precedence for senior administration of their agency.

‘Arousing false expectations’

The Intercourse Discrimination Act 1975 made it illegal to discriminate in opposition to girls or males ‘on the bottom of intercourse’ or marital standing in issues regarding employment, coaching, training, harassment, the availability of products and providers, and the disposal of premises.

It established three statutory types of discrimination that grew to become often known as direct discrimination: treating somebody much less favourably due to their intercourse; oblique discrimination, the place a coverage or follow applies to everyone however disadvantages a bunch of individuals due to their intercourse; and victimisation, the place somebody is handled unfairly as a result of they increase a criticism about discrimination.

On the time, notes Anne Morris in her chapter on the act within the e book Ladies’s Authorized Landmarks, a lady could possibly be refused a job as a result of their employer most well-liked a person and there have been nonetheless legal guidelines proscribing girls’s permissible occupations and hours of labor.

Launched by James Callaghan’s Labour authorities, which had come into energy in 1974, the act adopted and widened a non-public member’s invoice.

However, as Morris notes, even the white paper that preceded the invoice, Equality for Ladies, cautioned in opposition to anticipating an excessive amount of. ‘It is necessary,’ the paper mentioned, ‘to recognise the inevitable restraints on what will be achieved by laws, in order that it’s seen in correct perspective, with out arousing false expectations or encouraging a way of complacency.’

The act didn’t apply to corporations with fewer than 5 workers and included an exemption that allowed employers to indicate a ‘real occupational requirement’ for a person to do the job.

One of many greatest flaws, Morris explains, was its underlying precept that ladies needs to be handled in the identical method as a person in the identical circumstances – an strategy, she says, that ignored the ‘systemic inequalities’ in training and in household constructions which prevented girls competing on equal phrases with males.

It additionally ignored the truth that solely girls expertise being pregnant and childbirth, provides Morris. There have been no provisions coping with them. Initially, she provides, the courts held {that a} lady who had been dismissed as a result of she was pregnant couldn’t carry a intercourse discrimination declare as a result of there was no man with whom she could possibly be in contrast.

Nonetheless, Morris insists, the act was a ‘marker on the highway to trendy anti-discrimination legislation’ and alongside wider European laws ‘did alter the authorized panorama for the higher’.

Amended over time, the act was repealed when intercourse discrimination was included with different ‘protected traits’ within the Equality Act 2010.

To enshrine equality of the sexes in legislation was an ‘vital symbolic assertion that expedited and amplified the social change in attitudes in the direction of girls’, says Tarun Tawakley, associate at Lewis Silkin and member of the Regulation Society’s employment legislation committee. However, whereas the 2 acts ‘have been important in highlighting the gender pay hole and selling equality of the sexes extra broadly’, he argues that the rules contained in them haven’t stored tempo with the challenges going through girls within the workforce.

Regardless of the Equal Pay Act, he says that in at present’s more and more professionalised labour market, many corporations protect a degree of secrecy over particular person pay and advantages, which doesn’t give girls the data vital for them to evaluate whether or not they have grounds for a declare.

‘I really feel extremely fortunate to have grown up in an period and a rustic underpinned by authorized protections in opposition to intercourse discrimination,’ Clare Murray, managing associate on the specialist employment and regulatory legislation agency CM Murray, tells the Gazette. ‘The Intercourse Discrimination Act 1975 laid the foundations for future generations of girls, together with my very own, to fulfil our ambitions and to interrupt by the obstacles put up round girls to maintain them of their place and hold them silent.’

However, she argues, the act by itself is a ‘blunt instrument’ and girls face many difficulties implementing the rights that they got.

Murray highlights the extreme delays in employment tribunals that imply probably having to attend 18 to 24 months for a listening to, the shortage of public funding and the excessive value of bringing claims.

As well as, ‘important underfunding’ of the Equality and Human Rights Fee, and the stigma that may nonetheless connect to bringing a intercourse discrimination declare – even efficiently – imply that ‘the 1975 act has but to realize its full early promise’.

Other than ‘astonishingly widespread’ sexual harassment and unequal pay points, she factors to present examples of discrimination confronted by girls, together with dismissal after they reveal they’re pregnant or changed by their maternity cowl, or the refusal of versatile working to permit them to steadiness profession and child-rearing.

‘I really feel extremely fortunate to have grown up in an period and a rustic underpinned by authorized protections in opposition to intercourse discrimination’

Clare Murray, CM Murray

Analysis by marketing campaign teams Pregnant Then Screwed and Ladies in Information lately confirmed that as much as 74,000 girls lose their job yearly for being pregnant or taking maternity depart.

Tawakley welcomes the latest modifications to early years’ childcare funding, however insists that to impact wholesale change the federal government might want to conduct a evaluate of the statutory household depart regime, significantly the disparity between maternity and paternity depart. ‘Within the meantime, employers have an opportunity to shift the dial on this now by their very own household depart insurance policies and advantages,’ he says. For instance, his personal agency Lewis Silkin has carried out a ‘New Mother or father’ depart coverage entitling all new mother and father to 6 months’ depart at full pay.

The agency, he provides, additionally has equal female and male illustration on each its boards, whereas its chair and one joint managing associate are girls.

Many legislation corporations have launched versatile working insurance policies and different assist, together with elevated parental depart, mentoring and return to work programmes. Some have additionally carried out targets to extend the variety of girls in senior roles, together with partnership and management positions. For instance, nationwide agency TLT has said it desires 50% of its companions to be girls by 2029.

More and more, corporations are additionally seeking to enhance consciousness of the influence that menopause has on girls, in addition to initiatives and insurance policies to assist them.

Kingsley Napley has signed the Menopause Office Pledge run by organisation the Wellbeing of Ladies, whereas one other agency appointed a menopause officer. In January, Dentons launched the MenoVest, which it described as a ‘menopause simulator and empathy device’. The sleeveless gilet, which has an built-in energy pack that heats up and cools down at irregular intervals in the course of the time it’s worn, is meant to allow male colleagues to expertise some signs confronted by girls present process menopause.

Truthful allocations

Denis-Smith goes on to focus on follow areas the place feminine development has been too gradual, significantly in felony legislation, company and finance. In bigger Metropolis legislation corporations, the share of feminine companions continues to be underneath 30% – and even decrease for fairness companions.

As Denis-Smith’s analysis reveals, in too many corporations, senior administration doesn’t have a technique for bettering equality. She additionally fears that the backlash over variety and inclusion at present seen within the US could affect corporations right here (see p22).

Furthermore, Denis-Smith factors to obstacles such because the long-hours tradition and a give attention to billable hours in legislation corporations that may be incompatible with household life. Regardless of alternatives for versatile working, she suggests girls worry that working part-time will negatively have an effect on their careers. Just a few part-timers grow to be companions.

To assist enhance the scenario, she calls on corporations to have a look at honest work allocation practices and extra inclusive networking occasions. As well as, corporations ‘want to determine clear pathways for development, setting out what it takes to make it from trainee to associate’ and having higher assist for ‘profession sustainability’, significantly after maternity depart.

‘It’s additionally about managing consumer expectations,’ insists Denis-Smith, who desires to see corporations ‘advocate for cheap consumer calls for that respect household commitments’.

From November 2017 to January 2018, the Regulation Society ran a survey as a part of its Ladies in Management in Regulation challenge. This captured the views of seven,781 ladies and men on why girls weren’t progressing to senior positions.

Christina Blacklaws, then president of the Society, says: ‘We discovered a easy reply – systemic bias.’

Since then, she laments: ‘I’m undecided issues have significantly improved. You possibly can pretty simply make the case that they’ve bought worse,’ with some corporations going backwards in respect of the gender pay hole.

Agreeing with Denis-Smith, Blacklaws suggests: ‘Gender steadiness and fairness points could not have the centrality to some legislation corporations’ technique that they need to and generally lip service is paid with out actual dedication to constructive change.’

Regulation corporations ‘ought to have this as a key strategic goal’ as a result of analysis reveals that variety of management enhances profitability. ‘The chilly, arduous enterprise case is made out even when the ethical one shouldn’t be prioritised,’ says Blacklaws, calling on corporations to enroll to the Regulation Society’s Ladies in Regulation Pledge, which adopted its analysis.

‘It’s all about possession of success within the management crew, committing to clear targets and being accountable for his or her achievement,’ she provides.

One space the place progress has been made, suggests Murray, is in clamping down on sexual harassment. She attributes this partially to the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s efforts to alter the tradition in legislation corporations.

Requiring corporations to analyze and report any allegations of sexual harassment, or different illegal discrimination, and requiring companions to intervene, moderately than turning a blind eye, she says, is ‘bringing a few important shift in consciousness and attitudes within the sector’.

Talking out

Murray cautions in opposition to complacency, suggesting that youthful girls stay reluctant to talk out about dangerous behaviour. At a latest occasion organised by the Metropolis of London Solicitors’ Firm, a part of a programme of occasions specializing in the profession development and growth of younger feminine authorized professionals, she stories that one younger lady requested: ‘How do you reply to an inappropriately private query by a senior male colleague, in a method that’s secure and won’t hurt your profession?’

Murray concludes: ‘It felt miserable that fifty years on from the introduction of the Intercourse Discrimination Act 1975, girls are nonetheless having to ask the identical questions and to take care of the identical situations as these confronted half a century in the past.’

Guaranteeing change for future generations, she concludes, requires motion not simply by legislation corporations, but additionally in faculties and universities, and by regulators and authorities.

Catherine Baksi is a contract journalist