Law Society virtue signalling

[MissBeehiving]

The Law Society awards are open for nomination at the moment and depressingly, the “Woman Lawyer of the Year” is now open to anyone identifying as a woman. So the award designed to celebrate the achievement of women in the legal profession, is now fair game for men.

www.lawsociety.org.uk/events/excellence-awards/categories-and-criteria/

Another complaint going in on Monday from me. Although, as I am a biological woman, I daresay my views may be overlooked...

I’m going to be asking why they think that by opening the award to men that this will assist in addressing the under representation of women at a senior level.

For anyone else who is interested, the email is;
[email protected]

Well done all the female solicitors on here - PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do write and complain and explain why.... Here is one place where surely rational argument and what is CURRENTLY the law rather than might be the law in the future HAS to win out..... Good luck to all of you

How to render what should be a valuable award virtually meaningless. Another female solicitor here. During my career I've put up with sexual assault and discrimination from male colleagues and had to lower my aspirations to have a family life. I am definitely not alone in my experiences and I'm angry at the thoughtlessness and unfairness of this gesture. I will be writing to the Law Society.

I'm sure it was only a few months ago the Law Society were celebrating 100 years since the first female solicitor was admitted!?

The university I work at is offering a PhD scholarship for women in a field where women are significantly underrepresented. Yes, you guessed it, it's open to self-identitying women.

The law society knows the profession is not working well for women:
www.lawsociety.org.uk/news/press-releases/largest-ever-survey-on-gender-equality-in-legal-profession/

I would rather see them trying to sort these issues than virtue signalling.

Hey jon66

Took your advice.
Read the Equality Act

Found this part interesting.

They may be a tiny minority and there are far more women, but it only takes one to wreck a huge number of women.

In any given profession males already have a huge advantage through basics of being male.
It only takes on of them to identify as female and that takes away the top prize opportunity from hundreds of women. This is why we have "women only" anything. It recognises that disadvantage.

In any given women-only space you only need ONE male to effect every single woman in that space.

Think about it. 2rebecca

Isn't "think about it" the sort of patronising phrase we criticise men for using. You are soooo much more thoughtful than I am?

I am a member of the Law Society and will be emailing.

Assuming a tiny minority isn't worth giving any thought to is rather naive.

Women can be patronising.

Why say something in a way to just piss the other person off though? That isn't a good way of communicating.

There is a bigger story here, it's not virtue signalling.and it's not about women as such.

Law is under represented within the lgbt community, as in significantly so with very few openly lgbt lawyers. To the point it's verging on discrimination.

The big firms are trying to redress this balance. As such, this will have been one of the steps they are taking to ensure a more balanced and open culture.

I don't have an issue with this, based on what their goal is and the example they are trying to set.. Discrimation can take many forms across many sections of society, and trying to ensure they are fairly represented is fine by me.

"anyone identifying as women" only targets some of the "t" bit of the lgbt lawyers though so I don't accept that as the reason for this. A special lgbt award would be better if that was their goal.

Bluntness100

So why are they opening the women's award to include men?

If they are really concerned about underrepresented lgbt people, they'd surely have an "lgbt" lawer recognition award.

You are not seeing gay or lesbian lawyers recognised in the slightest in this trans inclusivity. So it's not even LGBT beneficial it's just T beneficial.

This happens all the time. Organisations recognise a need to raise awareness of gay lesbian and transgender contributions. OK let's lump that in with the women and job done. Meanwhile women are left wondering what's going on.

I am a female solicitor , a mother and a partner but in a large Scottish firm so this does not affect me directly.

Homever I do not like the whole idea of "woman lawyer" of the year and would not include that category.

Personally I think law is an excellent career choice for a woman. The experiences on here about how difficult it is are not mine.

The issue underlying all of this is our laws and what the impact will be if they are suddenly blind to sex.

If none of us had ever heard of the word trans, and such people didn't exist, how would we respond if:

One day men announced that it was time to remove every reference to the female sex written into law, and all rights pertaining to the female sex?

And to regain any semblance of protection going forward, people would need to claim membership of a new group, with undefined characteristics, that any person, male or female could join. Any sex discrimination women faced in the past would only be answerable to in law going forwards, by virtue of one being a voluntary member of this male+female group with undefined characteristics. Which renders sex discrimination redundant. You don't recognise sex, you can't respond to sexism.

Bin legal recognition of sex; gain potential membership of a murky unisex faith based group without characteristics. If you're prepared to take up membership. If not, you're in no-woman's-land. The law doesn't recognise your sex, and you have no belief-based-characteristic to replace it with. You've nothing, no recourse now.

If that isn't the most terrifying prospect for women's rights in a couple of centuries I don't know what is.

That is pretty much how I assess the current situation, and I can do this assessment without referencing trans.

The proposed changes to the law are about erasing any recognition of actual sex. Entirely.

Even as I write that out I can't believe that LAW makers aren't sounding alarms. Instead they are celebrating this.

I read something from a senior law professor, female, that proposed the state could cease any sex registration entirely and the property attached to sex would be determined in every situation only by agreement or in the courts. She quoted the Canadian guy that spent 12 years fighting a womens's refuge as an example of how this works. This is where we are going.

The Law Society have been giving trans inclusion guidance (including a model transgender policy as a starting point) to law firms for years and run lots of LGBT events.

I strongly doubt that the women lawyers' division would object to this - I'm pretty sure I've met transwomen at women's events there. As a PP suggested, law firms can be seen as a bit stuffy (and I'm sure many of them are) and the Law Society have been under a lot of pressure to pull them into the present in terms of diversity and inclusion.

Why just the m to f transsexuals though? They always seem to get special treatment.

Longines

I'm sure they are but the training my female City solicitor friend had sounded quite sensible.

LassWi - I recognise that you may believe that but the most recent survey by the Law Society doesn’t support that.

www.lawsociety.org.uk/news/documents/law-society-women-in-law-infographic/

And reiterates that the reason for discrimination is the lack of flexible working and work life balance. One of the initiatives flowing from the survey was to use awards to raise the profile of successful women in the Law. Oh the irony.

The Law Soc has a female vice president this year - Christina Blacklaws and it may be worth contacting her.

It reminds me of attitudes years ago toward homosexuals, and people of colour, ethnic groups etc etc

No, it is not the same. People don’t ‘identify’ as gay. They are gay if they meet the definition of the word which is that they are attracted to members of the same sex.

You can’t identify as gay despite being heterosexual, or black because you feel you share some kind of ‘essence of black’ despite being clearly white.

Yet somehow it is supposed to be possible to ‘identify’ as a woman? No. It is as offensive for a man to claim a female identity as it would be to claim a black or gay identity despite all evidence to the contrary. Yet strangely women are the only group expected to accept this rubbish.