Closing the gender leadership gap in law

Over the past two decades, the legal profession has undergone significant feminisation. In 2014, women entered the profession in greater numbers than men for the first time, and by 2018, women constituted the majority of practitioners nationally. Women now consistently outnumber men in the legal profession in all states and territories across Australia.

Yet despite this dramatic shift, the gender balance at partnership tables and in the higher echelons of the profession tells a very different story – one that shows true equality is yet to be achieved.

A new report published by the International Bar Association reveals that while women account for 58 per cent of Australian lawyers, their representation drops to 45 per cent in senior positions. In large law firms, just 42 per cent of partners are women. At the bar, the leadership gap is most pronounced, with women comprising less than one-third of barristers nationally and just 16 per cent of senior counsel.

Although the proportion of women in senior positions has risen over time, this shift is not reflective of the overall number of women in law. Without meaningful structural changes, the legal profession risks entrenching these gender disparities and undermining the depth of its talent pool.

Structural problem in law

Across Australian organisations, men hold most leadership roles, even industries dominated by women like health, education and veterinary science. In the corporate sphere, nine out of 10 CEOs are men and 69 per cent of executive leadership team positions are held by men, according to the 2025 Chief Executive Women (CEW) Senior Executive Census. The pattern is linked to the gender pay gap, which sits at 21 per cent nationally and persists across every profession.

These phenomena are the result of social and economic factors that combine to reduce women’s access to professional advancement and senior roles.

In law, some of the gender leadership gap can be attributed to legacy factors and the fact that men were dominant in the profession up until relatively recently. But its continued persistence strongly suggests that it’s not a pipeline issue – it’s a structural problem.

“The issue isn’t how we get more women into the legal profession; it’s what happens to them once they’re in the legal profession,” says Associate Professor Meraiah Foley, academic director of equity, diversity and inclusion at the University of Sydney Business School and a member of the Australian Centre for Gender Equality and Inclusion at Work.

She co-authored a three-year study published in 2023 that examined gender equality in the legal profession and identified significant disparities in access to prestigious cases and projects, treatment by clients and promotion opportunities. It found one of the key drivers of inequity is the practice of billable hours.

“The structure of many segments of the legal profession is to reward long hours instead of outcomes, and therefore you’re rewarding the person who can work the longest. That is often gendered because it disadvantages people with caring responsibilities – which, in theory, could be anyone, but in practice is still predominantly women,” Foley says.

While technology and remote work offer a potential solution, she says an “always-on culture” often undermines these benefits, blurring the boundaries between work and personal life and failing to ease the pressure to work long hours.

Barriers impeding progress

Other significant barriers to women’s progression up the legal ladder include the frequent lack of powerful, influential sponsors and informal networks. “Because of legacy reasons, these are often male-dominated and they can be exclusionary – for example, if informal networking is happening late after work, over drinks or at sporting events,” Foley says.

Clarissa Follan, chair of the Wollongong chapter of the Women Lawyers Association of NSW, cites unconscious bias during promotion rounds and the greater likelihood of men mentoring men, as opposed to women, as impediments to career progression for women.

She says that in regional areas, such as the NSW southern highlands where she works as a commercial and dispute resolution lawyer at Our Lawyers, the barriers are so pervasive that they’re driving a growing number of women to start their own firms. “For these women to be able to achieve that leadership role, they need to leave the standard, traditional model of a law firm.”

These structural challenges are often amplified for women from diverse backgrounds. A 2024 research paper by Diverse Women in Law found practitioners with non-Western accents were 30 per cent more likely to face career obstacles.

“There’s a lot of linguistic profiling that goes on,” explains Ragni Mathur, chair of Diverse Women in Law. “Non-Western accents are frequently associated with lower perceived authority, which can limit opportunities for leadership roles.”

At the bar, Dr Kylie Weston-Scheuber, a barrister and board member at Australian Women Lawyers, says moving from salaried employment to self-employment can deter women, as it removes access to benefits such as sick leave and parental leave and can make it harder to manage caring responsibilities.

The dearth of role models for aspiring women barristers also compounds the problem. “I’m a big believer in the saying ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’, and it’s still very common to see an all-male bar table,” Weston-Scheuber says. “The very fact of not seeing women in court more often can act as a disincentive to women who might otherwise think about coming to the bar.”

Towards genuine flexibility

Assuming the gender imbalance in leadership will correct itself over time simply because more women are now working in law is misguided. “It won’t happen naturally,” Weston-Scheuber says. “Or if it does, it will be so slow and incremental that it will just take forever, when you consider that women have been a majority of law students for over three decades now, and that has only translated into women being a majority of solicitors in the last decade and is still not reflected in the percentage of barristers and partners in law firms.”

Barrister Angela Petrie, a member of the Women Lawyers Association of NSW, says strategies to close the gender leadership gap in law must focus on dismantling the systemic barriers that prevent women from advancing their careers.

“No singular strategy is 100 per cent effective in eliminating the gender leadership gap, nor is any effective in completely deconstructing the systemic barriers faced by women in law today. A collection of strategies is necessary to tackle systemic issues within all facets of the legal profession,” she explains, noting that leadership programs, conferences and courses that solely target women often ignore the systemic barriers ingrained within organisations.

One of the most effective ways to improve gender equality in senior positions across the profession is through flexible work arrangements – such as hybrid or remote work, carers leave, and variable start and finish times – which help women balance professional and caring responsibilities. In the International Bar Association report, most respondents (79 per cent) highlighted flexible work as a ‘very effective’ initiative.

Weston-Scheuber says it’s crucial that organisations demonstrate that flexible work is genuinely open to everyone at all levels of seniority to prevent lawyers with caring responsibilities from being marginalised or relegated to lower-profile work. “It’s very important that these initiatives be coupled with cultural change so that everybody feels comfortable taking that leave or adopting those flexible work practices.”

Justine Munsie has always worked “on a flexible basis” since she joined Sydney-based commercial firm Addisons as a partner 15 years ago. She says the firm’s flexible work policy has played a key role in it achieving gender parity at the partnership level where 12 out of the 24 partners are women.

“People know that they can take on work knowing that there will be that flexibility – there’s no resentment or distrust or anything like that,” she says. “Most of the women partners have had school-age children in my time here, if not younger children.”

Munsie says that five out of the firm’s six recent partner appointments have been women, showing that the firm’s culture allows “women partners to be grown through the firm” as well as recruited externally.

Likewise, at Moray & Agnew, where 63 of 125 partners are women, flexible work is standard practice across the firm, which has more than 800 staff. National managing partner Ian Denham believes it’s one of the reasons “women stay with us longer and prolong their legal careers with us more than they might have at other firms”.

“I can’t point you to our amazing flexibility policy that’s been implemented and promulgated and published on our website,” Denham remarks. “What I can say is our basic mantra to partners is: ‘If you can make it work, go and make it work. We will let you set the rules to a very large extent for you personally and for your team.’ And we actually live by that.”

Mentorship and visibility matters

Munsie says having a woman managing partner – Laura Hartley, who she describes as “a very good lawyer and a very good operator” – during a key growth phase at the firm served as both an important role model and a catalyst for mentorship. “Women can see the possibility of being able to succeed and know that their aspirations to leadership will be taken seriously,” she explains.

Petrie adds that “mentorship and upskilling of early-career women practitioners is vital in providing equal opportunities and outcomes for future leaders in the profession.” One of the most important outcomes of mentorship and increased visibility of women leaders among this cohort is the development of confidence, Mathur says, which is especially important for women from diverse backgrounds. “Their sense of belonging grows, and they can see a pathway for themselves,” she explains.

In particular, many commentators highlight male mentors and allies as crucial to efforts aimed at dismantling the gender leadership gap in law. “If you’re not facilitating that line of mentorship, and your senior level is predominantly male and they’re not mentoring females, you’re still going to have that gap around that unconscious bias and the fact that these decision makers are not looking at the women,” Follan says.

Denham agrees there “is a role for male mentors”. He mentors junior women partners, helping them develop skills in the “management of law firms and accounts, which brings them into the next echelon of management within this firm”.

Setting meaningful targets

Many law firms have expressed a commitment to a 40-40-20 gender balance target, where women comprise 40 per cent of partnership admissions, men comprise 40 per cent and the remaining 20 per cent varies depending on the applicant pool. Some firms have already achieved the target.

The Women Lawyers Association of NSW supports this model as a measurable and achievable way to achieve gender parity. “In terms of strategies firms can implement, targets can direct people’s attention toward new possibilities,” Follan says.

At the bar, Weston-Scheuber says the equitable briefing policy is an important initiative. Law firms that sign up to the policy commit to a target of briefing women barristers in at least 30 per cent of all briefs and ensuring that they receive at least 30 per cent of the value of all brief fees. The target for briefing was met for the first time in 2021-22, when women received 30 per cent of briefs from law firms reporting to the equitable briefing policy. However, the 30 per cent target has not yet been met for fees.

Across the profession, Weston-Scheuber says targets are an effective strategy to help close the gender leadership gap, but they must be matched with accountability and transparency.

“It’s all very well to make commitments to things and sign up to policies and so on, but if you’re not tracking your progress on them and if you’re not being held accountable for whether you meet those targets or fulfil whatever criteria you set for yourself, they’re not going to be effective,” she notes.

While progress is evident, the persistence of structural barriers shows that change won’t occur organically. Closing the gender leadership gap in the legal profession requires sustained commitment, cultural reform and accountability.

“It’s not enough to set a target and hope that it comes true,” Associate Professor Meraiah Foley says. “You must put the infrastructure in place to make it happen.”