The legal profession has a lot to do if it is to be a model of equality, says Carol Coulter, Legal Affairs Correspondent.
Over 50, earning more than €100,000 a year, married - with children cared for primarily by a spouse - and male: this is the profile of a successful lawyer that emerges from Gender InJustice, a major Trinity College report that was launched yesterday by the President, Mrs McAleese.
Conducted over 18 months by the academic lawyers Ivana Bacik and Cathryn Costello and the statistician Eileen Drew, the study is based on analysis of 788 21-page questionnaires filled in by male and female solicitors and barristers, as well as individual interviews and discussions with focus groups.
There has been a huge increase in the number of women entering both branches of the legal profession, and women now make up two-thirds of entrants to university law schools and half of the students taking professional courses at Blackhall Place and the King's Inns.
But this disguises the reality that the upper reaches of the profession are still male-dominated. Only 9 per cent of all senior counsel are women, and only one managing partner from 13 large solicitors' firms in Dublin is a woman.
There is also a huge discrepancy in earnings, with 42 per cent of male lawyers earning more than €100,000, compared with only 19 per cent of female lawyers. This is even more marked at senior levels, where 60 per cent of male lawyers over 50 earn more than this, compared with only 20 per cent of women of the same age. The gap in earnings also exists at junior levels, with 28 per cent of all male lawyers earning less than €35,000, compared with 35 per cent of women.
The reasons for this are complex, according to Bacik, and many of them apply equally to other professions. Although some of it is due to the fact that women lawyers tend to be younger, they also include a long-hours culture, the continued role of old boys' networks in professional advancement and the difficulty women still experience in balancing work and home life.
Male lawyers work longer hours than women (48 hours a week on average, compared with 43 for women) and are far more likely to have partners full-time in the home. This is the case with almost 40 per cent of all men, but it is true of only 4 per cent of women. The number increases dramatically when there are children: 65 per cent of lawyer fathers rely on a partner for childcare, compared with 9 per cent of women.
Surely this is a matter of choice for women? "We would ask is it a free choice," says Bacik. The difficulty of combining motherhood with work has led women to postpone pregnancy, for example, until they felt their careers were established.
One of the most alarming facts revealed in the survey is that women lawyers who have experienced discriminatory behaviour in interviews or at work did not feel they could seek redress through the Republic's raft of equality legislation, as they feared that doing so would damage their careers.
Helena Kennedy QC, the author of Eve Was Framed, a book on sex discrimination in the law in Britain, was in Dublin to help launch the report. She says the findings of this study mirror the UK experience.
Redress is made difficult by the absence of procedures, she says. "Informality works against women. The old boys' networks militate against women in the professions." Despite anti-discrimination legislation, questions about husbands, children and child-minding are still asked of women in interviews for places in barristers' chambers, along with questions such as "Are you a feminist?", she says.
"It was illegal, but they still did it. Women did not complain, because they were afraid it would blight their careers. You have to create a situation where women feel they can complain without repercussions."
In some ways the Republic is better than the UK, she says, with two out of the seven Supreme Court judges being women, compared with a total absence of women among the law lords. "We need to challenge the idea of 'merit'," she says. "It is not a value-free zone. You often find it is male ideas of excellence at work. For instance, they want judges that are 'authoritative', but these qualities in a woman are seen as bossy or over-opinionated."
The British system of judicial appointments is based on taking "soundings", and when it recently became subject to oversight by a judicial-appointments commissioner it revealed a shocking reliance on "tittle-tattle", she says. "Women [in line for judicial office\] were described as 'too spinsterish', 'dressing provocatively' or 'not in the judicial mould'. If that was used in the commercial world you'd be hauled through the courts."
She and Bacik agree, however, that a new generation of men and women is coming through the legal system for which these attitudes are unacceptable. Combined with institutional and cultural changes to improve work-life balance, it should help to make such discrimination a thing of the past.