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Sex-blind CVs are an irrelevance here as women now make up the majority of sucessful trainee applicants and NQs.

As several people have pointed out you need to compare like with like.

The pool of current partners is not the current pool of NQs. It's the pool of say 10-40 year qualifieds. So the first question is what % of that pool is female?

Secondly there is the issue of taking time out or part-time working during your career before you are made up. If you choose to take 3 years out of 5 off aged 30-35 when you have three chidlren and then come back 4 days a week to a City firm and need to leave at 5pm, that is bound to affect your partnership chances compared to another fee-earner (man or woman) who hasn't. Not necessarily because of presenteeism or hiddden bias -but becasue you won't have developed the same expertise and client contacts (or even had time to advance via office politics). The latter isn't fair but it't not a gender bias point per se. 'Out of sight, out of mind' as the saying goes.

Thirdly there is the question of whether women want to take the poisoned chalice of partnership in a big law firm at the same rate as men do.

I'm not saying that all the above, if taken into account, would remove all the inequality suggested by the digures. I'm sure there's a fair bit of laddish misogyny still present in law firms. But the old dinosaurs will die off soonand that will lessen.

Unitl as many men take as much time off too look after the kids as women currently do, I can't see the partner ratios matching up exaclty with intake though.