McLeod's Daughters

Victorian silks pledge to be nice to wymyn barristers ... Bar-O-Meter ... Not all plain sailing for hurdlers doing the Quantum Leap ... Alix Piatek reports 

Female barrister on the barricades with Eugène DelacroixHOW'S it going for wymyn at Vic's Bar & Grill? 

The cry from the battlements is for liberté, égalité and fraternité - with emphasis on égalité. 

So much so that in November 2013, Fiona McLeod, the then bar president unveiled a seven point plan, badged as The Quantum Leap. 

It's a bundle of initiatives designed to "redress the balance" and set targets to measure success.

The aim is to keep wymyn longer at the bar so that ultimately 30 percent of silks will be of the female persuasion, instead of the current nine percent. 

McLeod issued a rallying cry: 

"We don't shy away from the challenges ahead of us ... We need to adopt a new boldness." 

The revolutionary plan involves: 

A Bar Barometer, which will measure the numbers of women at the bar and their comparative earnings by seniority and area of practice. The Bar-O-Meter will be a "benchmarking document". 

A Silks Pledge. Bar leaders to embrace equality by recommending at least one female for a research task or junior brief and to actively support a non-discriminatory workplace culture.  (It's sort of alarming that this requires a pledge.) 

An Unconscious Bias Program. Bias training for unthinking key decision makers at the bar. Also to be introduced into the readers' course. 

Cultural Change. Implementing formal and informal mechanisms for reporting bullying, harassment and discrimination in anticipation of new national barristers' conduct rules. 

A New Mentoring Program. Available for women at "key milestones" - two years, seven years and the senior-junior years. 

Re-Engagement Roundtables. Quarterly sessions aimed at supporting women who've had "career breaks". 

Exit surveys: "To understand the drivers of attrition."   

All well and good. But, there remains the hairy nostril brigade who don't give a fig for statistical research, making pledges, mentoring, or cultural change. 

Mentoring and roundtables are also favourites of the NSW Law Society, which we wrote about last year. 

It's only been a couple of months since Victoria's seven-point plan was kicked into action and already there are reports of discord among the senior ranks. 

Sources deep inside Vic's Grill HQ tell us that initially only select people were offered the opportunity to sign the pledge, leaving quite a few silks feeling peeved. 

You can check out who has signed here. 
 
Another sceptic points out that the Bar-O-Meter isn't a revolutionary idea. The bar council already collects that data to determine insurance premiums and subscription payments. 

Presumably the bar has chosen not to publish those stats because it doesn't present a pretty picture. 

Despite the plans and McLeod's belief that the package will herald "a new generation of equality" there are attitudes that defy resistance. 

For instance, panellists at a recent career progression seminar recommended female barristers shouldn't charge for all of their time, so they can be seen as being "good value". 

Sigh ...

Rigorous selection will have to be applied to ensure that panellists with these exciting innovations don't head-up the "re-engagement roundtables". 

All of this activity has been triggered by the LCA's National Attrition and Re-engagement Study, which is not yet a public document, but early indications hint that it has arrived at the alarming discovery that women are under-represented in senior positions at the bar. 

A week after the launch of the Great Leap Forward, Chief Justice Earl Warren gave the issue a good nudge by asking in a speech, "where are the women in the court"?

She suggested that stereotypes and misplaced attitudes have lingered well past their time.  

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Here's the Quantum Leap launch document 
 
Here's the Quantum Leap outline 
 
This looks like a PR document, with glowing pix of women barristers, including two of them with a baby. 

Alix Piatek reporting