Legal stereotypes dictate the careers of women lawyers

The UK's top law firms must recognise gender disparity issues in the workplace and empower women to consider areas of law outside of the traditional stereotypes.

An event, hosted by international law firm Allen & Overy, saw a panel of leading women from the world of law and business discuss the challenges facing women in the profession.

Replying to a question from the panel's moderator, journalist Jenny Kleeman, Matrix Chambers's Helen Mountfield QC agreed that the law remains a gendered profession.

'That works two ways,' she explained. 'Perhaps [women] feel under pressure to prove that they can earn a lot of money and get into a great big firm and maybe don't ask questions about who it is they want to be and what they want to do.

'Maybe women think they can't do mergers and acquisitions because you have to work all night and that's just not a possible lifestyle choice. How can you make these structures work so anyone can be who they want to be and find their best talents and how to use them? That's the challenge.'

Mountfield continued: 'We used to talk about discrimination law and about whether men and women are unfairly treated differently. Now we talk increasingly about equality and diversity and that's having human rights language inform society about how it should be.'

Asked what impact the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LASPO) 2012 had had on the practice areas that women lawyers traditionally gravitated to, Mountfield replied: 'The kinds of legal aid that have been cut, like family and immigration law, have had an overwhelmingly disproportionate effect on women clients and the firms that women work in. We see real pressure on those firms.'

Laila Alodaat, the programme manager at the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, explained there was pressure on both male and female lawyers to comply with cultural stereotypes.

'There's far more women in the human rights field, first of all because it's stereotypically acceptable for a woman to sympathise, whereas men need to be tough and they cannot fight for causes,' said Alodaat.

'They don't feel they have the same social acceptance to do the same. Also, it is financial, because men are pushed from childhood to think that they need to make more money and it is fine for them to be greedy and it is fine for them to monetise everything.

'It's dictating our careers, but also our interests. Men hide such things until the point where they don't care to sympathise and women feel they have the space to do this, and they have the space to make less money.'

In a letter to The Times following Lord Justice Sumption's controversial remarks about women in the judiciary, Mountfield wrote: 'It is not a lack of effort or hard work that holds women back in the legal profession. Most will work far into the night if that is what it takes to prepare a case properly, even while taking on a disproportionate share of caring and household responsibilities.

'What are the barriers? Cultural exclusion… Lack of opportunities in a world where senior patrons are overwhelmingly male.'

Asked what could be improved about working in the legal profession, Mountfield said that 'cultural change' has to be recognised and come from the top.

'The top of the legal profession, which is overwhelmingly male, needs to recognise that there is a problem,' she responded. 'I want both men and women in the profession to recognise there is a problem and then work out how to fix it, because we are good at fixing problems. That is what lawyers do.'