For the first time women solicitors outnumber men in England and Wales. 

The Law Society's annual statistical report, which took a snapshot of the profession as at 31 July 2017, revealed that of the 139,624 solicitors holding practising certificates, 69,995 were women compared with 69,629 men. The report also estimated that if current rates of growth are maintained, by 2022 there will be approximately 10,000 more women practising solicitors than men, which flips a 10,000 deficit in 2010. RollOnFriday statisticians have extrapolated further to confirm that by 2086 there will be no male solicitors at all, and by 2095 the profession will be dominated by fembots and artifically-intelligent coffee machines. However this was not confirmed by the report.

Women made up the younger end of the profession, with a female mean age of 40 compared to 45 for men. And women dominated the sub-partner ranks, comprising 60% of solicitors up to 9PQE. But at partner level it's still a man's world, with twice as many male partners (19,884) than female (8,241).

 
"I heard there are only two dicks left in our firm."
"Yes, but at least we're in charge!"
 

Law Society president Joe Egan, championing fairness as per, said that it was "more important than ever that the profession recognises and rewards talent equally". Because it's going to start looking pretty rubbish if the dominance of women in the ranks isn't soon reflected by a substantial swing at partnership level.
Tip Off ROF

Comments

Anonymous 22 June 18 10:45

Perhaps as an additional factor in reaching a solution would be for women to be deliberately encouraged to start recognising and rewarding men's ability to be the primary or at least equal carer of children, rather than continuing to exclude men from that area. One aspect of the problem seems to be a proportion of women deliberately choosing to commit themselves as primary child carer, thus their partner's by default must commit themselves to work and career - on average this can only result in an imbalance in terms of male vs female career advancement. The idea that women should take equal responsibility for work/career aspects of family life, whether they like it or not, must become the norm.

Anonymous 22 June 18 11:16

Vast majority of people in law firms are women. Many service industries have a problem with recruiting young men. Storing up trouble for the future on a societal level.

Anonymous 22 June 18 11:47

09:45 have you really just said that the reason women don't advance more at work is because women are oppressing men's ability to be the primary care giver, forcing men to clutter up the workplace? Goodness me.

Anonymous 22 June 18 11:53

anon @09:45 howsabout you keep your nose out of the relationships of others and stop boring on about what women 'should' or 'shouldn't' do. There is never any one-size-fits-all and families make decisions taking into account a whole range of factors you have no clue about.

Anonymous 22 June 18 12:03

Anonymous - confused by your message stating that women, as opposed to firms, exclude men from paternal roles

Anonymous 22 June 18 12:39

Oh no!! A meninist! Who do these men think they are not regurgitating the modish feminist gubbins they're supposed to?

Anonymous 22 June 18 13:58

However inelegantly anon 09:45 puts it, the fact is that the current disparity between shared parental leave and maternity pay arrangements in most firms (which may or may not be legal - this hasn't been properly tested yet- but was the officially endorsed position suggested by the government in paragraph 92 here https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/417505/bis-14-1329-Employers-technical-guide-to-shared-parental-leave-and-pay-1.pdf) is a problem for men looking to help out at home.

Insofar as this situation is clearly not a female conspiracy, the idea of "the patriarchy" posits a deeply offensive notion of a male conspiracy. All that is happening is society - for both men and women - is changing. Women do earn less than men in full-time roles, but they earn more per hour in part-time roles. Men are more likely to be victims of violence. They get on average more prison time for the same criminal offences compared to women. They are more likely to kill themselves. They die younger. Women suffer more domestic violence (though men also suffer from domestic violence at non-trivial rates).

Which goes to say that a single statistic on gender pay gap does not fully capture a complicated dynamic; that blanket bad faith should not be imputed onto every member of either gender on account of that gender, and that life is complicated.

Anonymous 22 June 18 17:07

anon @ 9.45. I too am married to a woman who has been plotting to exclude me from my child's life from day one. I should have had an idea of what was to come when I watched her hogging all the limelight in the maternity ward of our local hospital - she was rather over-dramatic about the whole process I thought.

She selfishly insists on doing all the breastfeeding herself, as she claims that my own rather fulsome funbags are inadequate for feeding Neville J. She has also colluded with her employer to ENSURE that she is always paid less than me, so that through the cruel tyranny of logic I am effectively BANNED from being a stay at home dad. She has done nothing but manipulate and exploit the obscene over-advantages that society has given her.

Anonymous 23 June 18 12:52

Are we going to see diversity schemes aimed at encouraging more men into the profession? Oh no, only women can be discriminated against...

Anonymous 24 June 18 19:14

@ 11:39 - I don't think you understand what a meninist is. It isn't the absence of feminism. It is overt hostility towards women.

Roll On Friday 26 June 18 14:37

@18:14 "@ 11:39 - I don't think you understand what a meninist is. It isn't the absence of feminism. It is overt hostility towards women."

I have not heard of this word "meninist" before, so am not familiar with its cultural usage, but if its just a straightforward portmanteau of "men" and "feminist", this view does rather imply the reverse - that feminism itself is overt hostility towards men. Clearly that's not what feminism is or should be about. But it does seem unfair that anyone arguing for 'male rights' (under whatever daft badge they may have given themselves) must is assumed to be overtly hostile to women.

Clearly women still suffer gender related injustices and there's and its a good thing that we work to reduce them. But equally its pretty clear that men, particularly in the West, now suffer almost as many gender related injustices. What undermines men's rights is that no successful or aspirational man would ever want to be associated with arguing for them - because there is really no better way, in the current culture, of advertising total loser status. So gender related injustices accrue against low status men as there is no-one there to argue for their interests. If, for example, women were overrepresented amongst the prison population or the homeless - it would be a high profile gender issue. Because they are low status men those issues are discussed in gender neutral terms. You have to wonder whether that is right.

Anonymous 20 July 18 15:39

So what are we now going to do to try and encourage more men to enter the legal profession and redress the significant gender imbalance in favour of women at 9 years PQE level and below?!

What's sauce for the Gander is sauce for the Goose.