While more women are joining the profession, they still struggle to reach the top ranks
Only 34% of female lawyers in New Zealand are equity partners, according to the New Zealand Law Society | Te Kāhui Ture o Aotearoa 2023 Gender Equality Charter (GEC) survey.
Moreover, women make up just 47% of salary partners and only 30% of directors even though more women are joining the legal profession, with 55.4% of lawyers being women.
“Gender equality across the profession is essential to establishing and maintaining a fair, just and equitable legal system that reflects the population it serves”, Law Society chief executive Katie Rusbatch said. “It’s important that legal workplaces take intentional action to address gender equality issues”.
As per the survey findings, one in five GEC workplaces said that they had achieved gender equality for women in senior positions; 14% said that the ratio of women in top roles had gone up.
In 2021, 64% of respondents said that they offered unconscious bias training; however, the number dropped to 54% in 2023. Nonetheless, 50% of GEC respondents indicated that training had been set to take place after the survey.
Gender pay audits were conducted at 72% of GEC law firms, and 70% of GEC workplaces indicated that there was either no gender pay gap or that it was not applicable to the organisation.
The percentage of organisations examining policies from the perspective of gender equality also ticked up – 26% were looking at promotion policies, 11% at recruitment and 10% at parental leave.
A total of 31% of respondents called for the Law Society to offer leadership, policy and solutions, while 28% sought opportunities for training and mentoring. A total of 19% sought case studies and best practice examples in relation to how the Law Society could bolster all aspects of diversity, equality and inclusion in the legal profession.
“It’s encouraging to see positive movement in some areas; however, clearly there is some way to go. Women make up 55.4% of the profession, and over time we’d expect this to flow through into the senior roles. We encourage all legal workplaces to become signatories to the Gender Equality Charter and to commit to gender equality in their workplace”, Rusbatch said.
The GEC was launched in 2018 as a set of commitments by legal workplaces to bolster the retention and progression of female lawyers. To date, the count of active Charter signatories stands at 143.
