Women, Law, and Equality Essay -- Womens Rights, gender inequality

In the past 3 decades, women made great advancements in the workforce. First, they have become an integral part of the labour market; they have access to higher education and consequently to traditionally male dominated professions such as medicine, law and business. While statistics show that women are equal to men in terms of their numbers in the law profession, it is not clear however, whether they have achieved equality in all other areas of their employment. In this paper, I will examine women’s experiences in the law profession; whether women are earning equal salary compared to the male lawyers, do they still face barriers that are gender related and whether they have broken the glass ceiling in a profession that is supposed to be an example for practising equality and justice. The experience of women lawyers. Despite improvements to women’s role in the labour market, women are still facing obstacles that are gender related. Women continue to bear the main responsibility for domestic duties and child care and further more, policies have not enabled women to fully succeed. While women were able to gain access to this highly male dominated profession, and in some cases they outnumber their male counterparts, researchers agree that women are still facing discriminatory barriers. While discrimination is more subtle nowadays compared to the blatant and stupid style of the recent past (Adcock, 2006) women are still experiencing discrimination which is preventing them from receiving equal pay, thus hindering their progress and altering their career paths. They still face an array of barriers to achieving equality in their careers, including the allocation of work, opportunities for advancement, income differentials... ... of the choices that women are making or the constraints that they have to live with. I argue that women do not have the freedom to pursue their careers in the same way men do, they have the juggling act that they need to perform by satisfying their social stereotyping roles of care givers and nurturers. While equal pay is not an issue on the outset in federally regulated sector due to the Pay Equity legislated, however it would be interesting to see how many women are reaching high ranked positions in proportion to the overall demographics. According to a report y the Treasury board secretariat on diversity in the public service â€Å": Women†¦ have faced negative attitudes and stereotyping and have consistently undervalued† which confirms while women are supposed to be renumerated equally to men, they have yet to improve their representation in the leadership ranks.