International Women's Exclusive 2: Brabners partner silences herself

notning brabners

^{Let's present a united front, please, ladies.}

Brabners staff have celebrated International Women’s Day with a big tub of popcorn after a female partner went publicly off-message.

The firm held a panel discussion for IWD at its Manchester office this week at which four Brabners women discussed their career journeys, “including challenges they have faced and how the professional landscape has changed”.

The event was rather meanly dismissed by a source as hollow “virtue signalling” on the basis that the firm “has a massive gender pay gap” and “the full equity is 87% male”.

The problem for the firm was that one of its female partners said the same thing in a comment under the host’s celebratory post on LinkedIn, somewhat complicating the image it had presented to the world of Brabners: haven for straight-talkin' female lawyers.

The off-piste partner wrote, “Well done [fellow partner] you’re genuinely inspirational in your continued enthusiasm and commitment to work from within to move the dial on the firm’s 87% male senior equity partnership and, 36% gender bonus pay gap etc. Good on you!”

brabners iwd

^{A real shame she couldn't congratulate the firm on its 13% instead.}

ROF understands the partner recently resigned from the firm. A source said, “she was actually being positive and complimenting other female partners who, unlike her, are willing to continue working from within for change”.

Unfortunately “everyone was talking about it” and the comment was “deleted within an hour”. The remaining messages are unambiguously positive and devoid of uncomfortable statistics.

A male-dominated firm silencing a woman’s observation that it’s a boy’s club is never a great look on IWD. However, it is not known whether the firm applied pressure on the partner or whether she removed the comment of her own volition. ROF asked, but Brabners declined to comment.

Brabners is getting really good at wiping stuff off the internet, though: first it was boobs, then a disastrous case summary, and now awkward interjections (although it also has heroes). If you’ve spotted some interesting IWD flourishes, such as discount salad or guys singing, get in touch.

Comments

Everybody knows it’s a jolly boys club. Good on the partner who exposed this and let’s hope she’s found somewhere better.

Silenced herself or silenced by a letter containing allegations of wrongdoing?

Any mention of a 'pay gap' that does not provide a breakdown based on area of specialism, hours worked and level of seniority is useless at best and likely purposefully misleading.

Hollow virtue signalling seems a very good way to some up almost any DEI initiative.

One would guess there is a social media policy in play that she was reminded about.

Absolutely is the old boys club. That’s no good for anyone really - unless you’re one of the old boys lapping up the £££. There’s no way to take you down the equity rung you’re on so if you get comfortable you still get the £££

Glad to see that despite the incessant banging of the marketing drum from the firm, the tokenism being exposed

Were you silent or silenced?

What's a firm to do?

IWD is one of our new holy days, so you have to do something.

If you just politely ignore it then someone will start shuntering on about how your refusal to join the chorus and go through the motions along with the rest of the congregation is somehow 'excluding' them.

But if you say all of the twaddle you're supposed to then someone else will moan and gripe that the partnership isn't at least 50% female.

I mean sure, you can try telling them that the DEI prayer book is all very inspiration but that ultimately you're a commercial organisation that needs to turn a profit in order to pay for all this stuff, and that you'd have more female equity partners if only you could but that it would be impossible to keep your actual rainmakers if you started larding the equity and sharing their drawings with bright ambitious women who - despite all their talents and Top 500 Women in BBQ Repair Shop Financing awards - just can't seem to crack £100k annual revenues for love or money; but then everyone moans at you for deviating from the permitted canticles and psalms.

Best to just delete the comment, keep a low profile, and wait for everyone to get distracted by the next Saints Day (which I think, but can't confirm, is possibly International Trans Day Of Acceptance, or it might be one of the two Black History Months, but the point remains the same).

She had moved on to another firm at the time of the post so Brabners couldn’t have made her remove the post

What is the breakdown by gender of a) trainees and b) newly made up partners?

"What is the breakdown by gender of a) trainees and b) newly made up partners?"

Great idea, let's compare two cohorts of people whose careers are decades apart, and who have gone through two completely different sets of selection criteria, both at the entry point of their careers (again, several decade apart) and for the two roles that we're selecting our cohorts on. Surely there's almost nothing that data couldn't tell us.

We'll have cracked this gender pay gap thing by teatime.

Which is great, because then we can get onto the important business of academically quantifying which is best: Apples or Oranges.

Who says that lawyers are statistically illiterate, eh? We're so good at it that we could be MPs if wanted.