Women’s battle to rise in the legal world

WOMEN may outnumber men in the lecture halls of law schools‚ but the legal profession is still male dominated.

That is the word from Amanda Lamond‚ head of the Centre for Integrative Law and founder of Wolela: Women Leading in Law – a network of women lawyers.

The Wolela conference on Friday, aims to delve into how women can break the glass ceiling in the legal profession.

Speakers include Constitutional Court Judge Leona Theron and US civil rights attorney Dr Artika Tyner.

There were 15 004 practising men attorneys in 2015‚ compared to 8 708 women attorneys‚ according to a report published in De Rebus.

“The barriers are often invisible‚ putting women at a disadvantage as a result of cultural assumptions and organisational structures‚ as well as patterns of interaction that inadvertently benefit men,” Lamond said.

Wolela was not a men-bashing platform‚ she said, but was more about deepening the understanding of what women face and finding solutions.

Lamond said South Africa’s legal profession was still disproportionately men – only six of the 23 judges in the Supreme Court of Appeal were women‚ and one of the big five law firms only appointed a woman at its helm two years ago.

“We need urgently to change the traditional law firm model and organisational culture,” she said.

“The need now is to move from equality, giving everyone the same thing, to equity, making sure everyone is empowered to take advantage of the same opportunities‚ in spite of challenges they may face.”