Law firm sets 40:40:20 diversity target

[SlipperyLizard]

I saw this first on LinkedIn earlier - Baker McKenzie have announced a target that by 2025 they will have 40% men, 40% women and 20% “flexible” (men, women or non-binary persons) in senior positions.

www.bakermckenzie.com/en/newsroom/2019/06/gender-targets

I’d like to place a bet that if we check their stats in 2025 they’ll have (at best) 40% women, 60% men and a statistically insignificant percentage of non-binary persons.

Is this the best that women lawyers can hope for? To hold 40% of senior positions a quarter of the way through the 21st century?

Happy with 20% disabled quota, especially due to barriers faced by disabled people. But the NB/ trans quota fails to acknowledge the complexities around those who do struggle with gender identity. Many of them will have MH conditions and regardless of what the vocal TRAs say, those conditions are not all caused by bullying or ill-treatment by others. What will probably happen is that people without GD like Pips Bunce will take those places of the quota. Those are people who generally do not struggle in the way that many people who ID as transgender do. For all the harping on about intersectionality, TRAs don’t seem to apply it to themselves. Rich, late-life transitioners or those without GD are not oppressed and can in no way be compared to someone with autism who self-harms and believes themselves to be the opposite sex.

I don’t think that people understand the meaning of proportionate. Half the population is female, so that should be reflected at every level of senior jobs. However, half the population is not BME, trans or disabled but I have seen people arguing for 50% representation of these groups before. I think that any organisation with a commitment to diversity should aim for its workforce to reflect the general population.

I think there can be a few challenges to being very strict with these proportions though. Even apart from questions around whether some industries have reasons other than sexism for an imbalance compared to the population.

Even in an industry that as a whole has proportionate representation, it won't follow that each particular workplace will have the chance to hire exactly proportionately. Over time you would tend to see a certain amount of fluctuation in either direction. If you don't build that flexibility into a quota system it will tend to lead to problems where you may be stuck not filling a position, or hiring someone significantly less competent.

It's also simply not within the control of an individual business to create all the conditions that would lead to them having the right people applying. An engineering firm that said they would hire 50% women cannot do much about the fact that 50% of the engineers graduating are not women. Whatever the cause of that is, it exists at a different place in the system and has to be addressed there.

I think there is also some question, within industries, of what sort of positions appeal to various people. Why do women make up such a large proportion of GPs, but not surgeons? Does it matter?

Making a target like 40%, in an industry like law with a lot of female graduates, is pretty reasonable I think. It allows for enough flexibility to accommodate particular circumstances, but its a pretty robust target that will make a long term difference in how they think about hiring and management.

The problem aside from their proportion system is proportions don’t really by themselves address inequality or institutional misogyny. That is what I am curious about. Such as how are they going to ensure that even before these levels there is equality to the sexes? That once there are women in those positions they will have an equal voice?

I work in a small firm with 6 partners. The majority of them are women (the ‘younger’ partners). The men are not “awful” to women or anything in terms of overt sexism or misogyny- they work with a lot of women as combined with staff our office is 90% women and know they are valuable - but they have been in practice a long time and it is a constant battle for us women to reflect to them how they are at times incredibly sexist when they don’t think they are being so. By “favouring” young male associates for work or raises over females despite the comparable experience and skill (or even greater experience and skill by the females), by holding against female associates the same things they praise in the males. It was not until us female partners got into the partnership we also realized the pay inequalities that were in play when we were ourselves associates compared to the male associates with even less experience. A male associate who started at exact same time I did had less experience and yet started at $5,000 more. Another male they hired a couple years later with even less experience started at $20,000 more! I called it the tall male bonus. Neither of these men stayed with the firm either.

Now that I am one of the bosses, along with my other female partners, we won’t put up with that. And so far the men have been receptive to our positions. But the point is I am sure they would have kept doing what they did if we had not pushed it.