Undermining Gender Equality: Female Attrition from Private Law Practice

The number of women in the legal profession has grown tremendously over the last 40 years, with women now representing about half of all law school graduates. Despite the decades‐long pipeline of women into the profession, women's representation among law firm partnerships remains dismally low. One key reason identified for women's minority presence among law firm partners is the high level of attrition of women associates from law firms. This high rate of female attrition undermines efforts to achieve gender equality in the legal profession. Using a survey of 1,270 law graduates, we employ piecewise constant exponential hazard regression models to explore gendered career paths from private law practice. Our analysis reveals that, for both men and women, the time leading up to partnership decisions sees many lawyers exit private practice, but women continue to leave private practice long after partnership decisions are made. Gender differences in leaving private practice also surface with reference to cohorts, areas of law, billable hours, firm sizes, and career gaps. Notably, working in criminal law augmented women's risk of leaving private practice, but not for men, while taking time away from practice for reasons other than parental leaves, hastens both men's and women's exits from private practice.     

Barriers to Gender Equality in the Canadian Legal Establishment

In this paper we trace the historical exclusion of women from the legal profession in Canada. We examine women’s efforts to gain entry to law practice and their progress through the last century. The battle to gain entry to this exclusive profession took place on many fronts: in the courts, government legislature, public debate and media, and behind the closed doors of the law societies. After formal barriers to entry were dismantled, women continued to confront formidable barriers through overt and subtler forms of discrimination and exclusion. Today’s legal profession in Canada is a contested one. Women have succeeded with large enrolments in law schools and growing representation in the profession. However, women remain on the margins of power and privilege in law practice. Our analysis of contemporary official data on the Canadian legal profession demonstrates that women are under-represented in private practice, have reduced chances for promotion, and are excluded from higher echelons of authority, remuneration, and status in the profession. Yet, the contemporary picture of the legal profession also reveals that women are having an important impact on the profession of law in Canada by introducing policy reforms aimed at creating a more humane legal profession. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

It’s Boom Time! (Again): Progress Narratives and Women’s Sport in Australia

ABSTRACT

Over the last three years (2015–2017), various media articles have pointed to an apparent “boom time” for women’s sport in Australia. Evidence for this boom is drawn from examples such as the introduction of the Women’s Australian Rules Football League, the television success of the Women’s Big Bash League (cricket), and the rise in interest in soccer due to the international achievement of the Matildas. Such media reports reflect and reinforce a narrative of progress that assumes that gender equality is becoming closer with every decade. This paper employs a critical historical method inspired by the work of Joan W. Scott to analyse articles that have declared or commented on a contemporary boom in women’s sport in Australia. The 120 contemporary articles are analysed alongside 400 historical articles that present similar arguments and themes. In identifying similarities between the historical and contemporary articles, this paper raises questions about the reality of the so-called moment of progress we are currently experiencing, and discusses the possible consequences for feminism and social change in sport.     

Mothers on Trial: Discourses of Cot Death and Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy

This article explores some of the issues raised by Munchausens Syndrome by Proxy (MSbP) and the relationship between medicine and law, specifically the discourses which feature in the courtroom portraying motherhood and expectations of parenting. These discourses are often hidden yet play a determining role in prosecutions for alleged maltreatment of children involving medically unexplained infant death syndrome. We offer a critique of MSbP and seek to unveil the assumptions about mothers, the parent predominantly affected by the diagnosis, and mothering that underlie the association of women accused of deliberating harming their children. We suggest such insights are valuable because although the syndrome has never acquired a clear medical or legal definition, it has had repeated appearances in the literature and courtroom over the last 25 years and has more recently attracted attention from government, health care practitioners, academics and the media. We explore these issues through an examination of two recent Court of Appeal decisions in England: those of Sally Clark and Angela Cannings.     

Europeans of the Peruvian Andes: A Family History, 1860s–1940s

Liberal elites in nineteenth-century Peru were eager to attract European immigrants to help modernise their country. The majority arrived independently bringing commercial skills, while a minority, contracted as colonists, settled in the tropical lowlands. This article focuses on two European communities established in the central Andean region, where immigrants from northern Italy excelled as merchants and families from the Austrian Tyrol became smallholders. Through a reconstruction of one family's history, which draws on personal letters and a photograph, the article explores the experiences, character and socio-economic transformation of these communities and the significance given to European-ness and whiteness.     

Pension Reform and the Fiscal Policy Stance

The increased budget deficit caused by the privatization of a public pension plan does not imply a relaxation of the stance of fiscal policy. The reform's impact on the fiscal stance and national saving depends primarily on its effect on the sum of explicit and implicit public debt and on the postreform payroll tax and private system contribution rates. Its impact also depends on the difference between the rate of interest on implicit and that on explicit public debt, among other influences. Pension privatization, if not offset by fiscal consolidation, can loosen the fiscal stance in some circumstances.