Overview
An ambitious new global project to study the lack of gender parity at the most senior levels of the legal profession. The first-of-its-kind, nine-year study will identify barriers and track progress of achieving equal representation of women in the highest levels of private practice, in-house positions, the public sector, and the judiciary.
The International Bar Association and LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation are collaborating on an ambitious global research project on gender equality in the legal profession. This study will focus on the number of senior women across private, public, judicial and in-house legal sectors in 16 jurisdictions. The aim of this project is to identify the statistical disparity between men and women at senior levels in the legal profession on a global scale, and identify whether diversity initiatives introduced to address this disparity are having any impact.
Current research shows that females make up the majority of law students and graduates globally, but this is not reflected in the statistics of those working at senior levels, across all legal sectors, where women still constitute a far smaller proportion than their male counterparts. The project seeks to understand and address this gap via a longitudinal study, and provide practical conclusions and guidance to the global legal profession.
While previous studies have focused primarily on commercial law firms, where data and willingness to participate have been prevalent, the IBA study will be the first to provide global data from law firms, the Bar, government, public prosecution, in-house lawyers and the judiciary. Data will be collected every three years, over a nine-year period. The study will go beyond simply identifying challenges faced by women practitioners; determining what measures and initiatives are being enacted by the profession; and tracking whether they are having an any meaningful impact upon the proportion of women lawyers in positions of seniority.
In March 2022, the first of the project’s reports was released on England and Wales. Reports on Uganda and Spain followed later that year. The report on Nigeria was released on International Women's Day 2023, followed by the Netherlands and Chile later that year. A case study on Nepal was released at the start of 2024, the report on the Republic of Korea was published in April, and the Brazil report followed in August 2024.
At the end of 2024 a progress report was published, setting out the key findings from the 50:50 by 2030 project to date following the publication of reports across 11 jurisdictions.
The project is being led by IBA’s Legal Policy & Research Unit, Diversity & Inclusion Council, with support and input from the Women Lawyers' Committee
If you would like to be involved in producing a case study on gender balance in the legal profession in your jurisdiction please contact:
sara.carnegie@int-bar.org
