Women solicitors believe they have to clock-up more billable hours than their male counterparts to compete successfully in the workplace, the Association of Women Solicitors (AWS) has claimed.


AWS chairwoman Susha Chandrasekhar said: 'Many single women in their late twenties and early thirties who have spoken to us state that they still feel they need to compensate for being a woman. In the relentless billable hours culture in law firms, that means billing more than a man, hence longer hours in the office.



'All this comes rather unstuck with children. The simple fact is that the road to promotion and the road to motherhood run parallel. Childcare, still predominately undertaken by women, means that a woman does not have the same flexibility to work longer hours.'



Statistics released by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) last week revealed that legal professionals are giving away an average of £12,177 in unpaid overtime every year. The figures, derived from the government's Labour Force Survey Summer 2007 and Annual Survey of Hours and Earners 2007, also revealed that half of lawyers are working an average of nearly nine hours' overtime every week. Only teachers put in more hours for free than legal professionals.



Further TUC statistics show that single women in their 30s are bearing the brunt of the overtime burden across all professions. Researchers found 39% of single women in their 30s do unpaid overtime, compared to 26% of men in their 30s.



However, while the proportion of women of all ages doing unpaid overtime drops from 24% to 17% once they have children, the figure remains relatively unchanged for men. The percentage of men of all ages doing unpaid overtime drops from 23% to 22% once they have children.



Anita Rice