Gender quotas are a controversial tool for attempting to remedy the gender imbalance in the corporate and legal world. In-House Perspective assesses their use and value in the world of 2026.

When the IBA’s Legal Policy & Research Unit (LPRU) began looking into how well females are represented in the legal sector back in 2017, one thing quickly became clear: there’s a huge disparity between the proportion of women entering the profession at the bottom end and the proportion that ultimately end up reaching the top. Yet while gender quotas are often seen as providing a quick fix, the LPRU’s subsequent research has found them to be unpalatable. Indeed, in a 2024 progress report, the LPRU found quota setting to be the least popular solution to the profession’s gender imbalance.

‘It wasn’t seen as something that companies wanted to do,’ says Sara Carnegie, the LPRU’s Director. ‘Some countries have legislative requirements, which is important for tone setting, but our research found that quotas are very unpopular. Insight from 12 different country reports found that 90 per cent of respondents said it was the least favoured measure.’

Yet, despite their unpopularity, quotas have been shown to have the desired effect of improving female representation in businesses. Caroline Andre-Hesse, a Council Member within the IBA Global Employment Institute, says that France passed a law in 2010 that requires 40 per cent of corporate board positions to be filled by women. Another law mandates companies to ensure that 30 per cent of their top executives – including general counsel – are women by March 2026, with the proportion rising to 40 per cent in 2029. The effect, Andre-Hesse says, has been positive.

‘It’s significantly improved things,’ says Andre-Hesse, who’s a partner at French firm Jeantet. ‘It’s true that for France, though not for countries like Norway, Sweden or Finland, that if you didn’t have these [rules then] I’m not sure that female representation would be where it is currently. Now it’s become normal. This is a personal view, but I still believe in merit and I don’t think I like the idea of being appointed to a position because I’m a woman. Nevertheless, I acknowledge that without these quotas French boards of directors would not have reached this almost [even] gender balance.’

For Adeola Sunmola, an officer on the IBA Women Lawyers’ Committee, the impact of not having strict quotas is evident in her home country, Nigeria. Although there have been government moves to address the lack of diversity within corporations in Nigeria, the measures haven’t been made mandatory. This, Sunmola says, means the take-up and impact has been lacklustre, with a 2021 report from the Nigerian Exchange and International Finance Corporation finding that across the country’s top 100 listed companies, just 13 per cent of board chairs and six per cent of CEOs were women. Similarly, women occupied fewer than ten per cent of board positions in most state-owned enterprises.

‘Gender imbalance in leadership and governance remains a persistent challenge in Nigeria,’ says Sunmola, who’s a partner at Udo Udoma & Belo-Osagie. ‘Despite constitutional guarantees of equality and several policy commitments to gender inclusion, women continue to be significantly underrepresented in political, economic and corporate decision-making positions.’ Sunmola explains that Nigeria’s primary framework for gender inclusion is its National Gender Policy, which was adopted in 2006 and recommends 35 per cent affirmative action for women in elective and appointive positions. ‘However, compliance remains voluntary and unenforceable,’ she says.

Regardless of how people view quotas, Rosina Müller Berner, an officer on the IBA Young Lawyers’ Committee, says their full impact will only be felt if they come hand-in-hand with a change in mindset – something that’s harder to manufacture than pure representation.

‘People don’t really like quotas in general – especially women,’ says Müller Berner, who’s Founder of fractional general counsel company Red Nest in Madrid. ‘For women that are really driven or ambitious they see it as a handicap because of the comments that you hear [regarding not being appointed on merit]. About eight years ago they were a huge thing and seen as the solution to all our problems. But it’s like wellbeing – unless you change your mindset and the change is structural, it’s not a matter of having more women, it’s a matter of being able to make those in leadership positions understand what women bring to the table.’

The return of President Donald Trump to the White House in 2025 has been problematic for moves designed to bring about that understanding. One of President Trump’s first actions on taking office was to sign an executive order that dismantled diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes within government, which he said were wasteful and discriminatory. This had an immediate knock-on effect for the corporate world.

Indeed, Raquel Flórez, an officer of the IBA Diversity and Equality Law Committee, says that many businesses have simply abandoned the efforts they’d been making to show their commitment to promoting and fostering diversity. ‘In Europe, diversity in corporations has very much been driven by clients,’ she says, noting that they would ask as part of pitches what the diversity set-up was at a firm.

‘They wanted to see diverse teams and you had to show evidence of that,’ adds Flórez, who’s a partner at Freshfields in Madrid, and this had a significant impact on law firms and their own DEI efforts. ‘At one stage it was a trend and everyone asked for it but now, with the backlash seen against DEI, mainly US companies aren’t asking any more.’

In other countries, issues such as female representation may be seen as something that would be nice to have, but not a priority when there are other gender-based problems to be dealt with. Carlos Bello Hernandez, an officer on the IBA Law Firm Management Committee, says that his country – which is led by female president Claudia Sheinbaum – has normalised gender balance within government by introducing mandatory quotas for female senators and representatives. However, within wider society the focus is on protecting rather than promoting women.

While noting that the legislation applying to Mexico’s government entered force in 2007, ‘for a country to change its mindset it takes time,’ says Bello Hernandez, who’s a partner at Mexican firm Bello, Gallardo, Bonequi y García. ‘There are issues like the high incidence of violence against women that need to be taken care of before going to the corporate world. In Mexico, you either have money or you don’t – there’s no middle class – and that’s where women face big, big problems.’ He says that while the corporate world is less of a focus from a gender perspective, nonetheless ‘things are changing because the mentality of the younger generation is different’.

Ultimately, Flórez says that as the factors that have held women back in the workplace are cultural, the solutions need to be too. Quotas are a useful tool, she says, but aren’t enough on their own. ‘You need things like parental leave being the same for both parents and being mandatory,’ she says. ‘That’s important because it takes away from employers the idea that you can’t employ women of a certain age because they might end up going away for a year. It also changes the culture because men realise that it’s their responsibility to look after children too. You need additional measures to start changing the mindset.’