All the female lawyers who practised in the 1990s remember her, in one form or another. In my case, she was a litigator I’ll call Jane, who could wear a bin bag and make it look chic. She was more fashionista than feminist – and yet she was the first of us who dared to wear trousers to work. That may sound unremarkable now, but at the time it felt revolutionary. Being able to swap formal shirts and pencil skirts for, erm, formal shirts and trousers was genuinely liberating. Younger readers may smile at the idea, but I promise you that this was progress.
Sometimes progress in women’s rights is marked by milestones, such as the Representation of the People Act or Gill & Coote v El Vino Co Ltd [1983]. In other cases, progress is made by people slowly and quietly chipping away at something so intangible and absurd that once the barrier has gone, it is hard to believe it was ever there.
Have you ever made a cup of tea for a guest? There was a time when the woman in the meeting (in those days, typically the only woman) would appear to be the only person who could serve drinks, no matter her seniority. I’m thinking of a conference with a KC I won’t name, who beamed at the instructing solicitor and her clients before inviting me to ‘be mother’; that is to say, pour the tea. My client looked so aghast that the silk quickly discovered he, in fact, knew how to operate a teapot. Our champion here was a lad from the Welsh valleys, evidently ahead of his time. Offering drinks is so normal now that it is hard to believe it used to be a professional pitfall.
Naturally, I have to write about babies in this piece, because the little darlings have such different impacts on the careers of mothers and fathers. Does birthing the child mean you are the only person who can care for it? I sit in meetings discussing applications for part-time working, reflecting on the 2004 meetings which assumed the world would end if a lawyer worked four days a week rather than five. Diligent and conscientious mothers’ work since then means that today the tone of the meetings is completely different.
Even so, I am conscious that these applications reflect society today, not society as I would like to see it. This means that there is little to be gained by saying that if fathers generally did an equal share of childcare and household chores, we would not see part-time working as generally female. If we are to achieve equal rights for women, we need structural change to reinforce and sometimes prompt changes in behaviour.
A colleague who was the first woman to be made a partner was invited to give six months’ notice of her intention to become pregnant, to aid business planning. One had to be fairly feisty to survive the 1980s workplace, and her partners soon discovered that she could advocate for herself just as effectively as she could for her clients. The women who had gone before me dealt with many ‘firsts’ that made my career so much easier. These first fee-earning mothers have been followed (slowly) by the introduction of parental leave, which enables many more men to enjoy time with their children.
It is almost hilarious now I look back, but at the time, all this nonsense was merely ubiquitous and exhausting. So I’m using this International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month to celebrate the little wins and the unsung victories.
Women are practising law, and over my career, we have started to practise it our own way, rather than merely mimicking men. When I asked friends for examples for this article, we all had the same stories, which strengthened our resolve to keep chipping away for change. My children and their friends are starting professional careers in an environment where people will not automatically assume the women are secretaries, in a world where it is possible to entertain clients without ending up at a strip club. A snowflake is a small and fragile thing: many of them together make an avalanche.
Suzanne Gill is a partner at Wedlake Bell, London
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