In 2018, a McKinsey & Company study found companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on their executive teams were 21% more likely to experience above-average profitability. And, in recent years, there has been positive progress in relation to the proportion of women in leadership roles within the legal profession and business more broadly.

In 2021, for the first time, every company in the ASX 200 index had at least one female director, and the proportion of female directors on S&P 500 boards reached just under 30 per cent. While this is pleasing, it’s clearly not enough – women are still significantly under-represented in business, particularly in the C-Suite.

Since our firm first set gender targets in 2014, we've increased female representation in our global partnership from 18% to 28%, and the number of women in the partnership has increased by 67%. In addition, women now hold 25% of our key partner leadership roles, compared to 16% in 2014.

While we're pleased with our progress, we have a long way to go to reach our goal of parity, and we cannot lose momentum. In fact, we want to step-up the pace. We believe the key to success is creating greater transparency and consistency about the steps we're taking to achieve gender equity – and being very clear about accountability for this ambition.

With this in mind, we created a global framework called our Eight Drivers for Gender Equity. The framework brings together existing and new areas of focus and includes our gender targets, role modelling, sponsorship, agile work, inclusive leadership (including addressing unconscious bias), engaging with our clients, parental leave (and supporting working families) and accountability.

In the same way the 10 Actions for Change are helping us improve ethnic diversity in the firm, our Eight Drivers for Gender Equity will help create focus and accountability in our work to improve gender balance in our partnership and across the business.

Publicly announcing these drivers means we will be held to account for progress. That is a statement that may strike fear in the hearts of many boardrooms, but my belief is that transparency galvanises change. Not just for my own firm, but for the legal profession as a whole. Without transparency and accountability, we risk stalling our progress and failing in our objectives – and that’s bad for our people and our clients.

That’s why accountability is one of our Eight Drivers – holding the firm’s leaders accountable for progress on this issue.

Everyone has a part to play in improving gender equity: we're all responsible for challenging our own biases; supporting our colleagues, and looking out for opportunities to amplify the voices of women. But improving gender balance in the firm is the formal responsibility of every partner and every people leader in our business.

Our global executive is ultimately accountable to the council for progress against our gender targets, and the executive, in turn, holds regional and practice group leaders accountable for progress in their parts of the firm.

The responsibility for developing equitable pipelines to partnership sits with the managing partner of each practice group, as well as the regional head of practice. They each have objectives regarding gender equity and report to the Global Executive on their group's progress.

This personal accountability puts gender equity firmly on the agenda of all leaders in the firm. I believe that’s key to us achieving our ambitions.

It’s worth reflecting in more detail on some of the other Eight Drivers for Gender Equity.

Our clients are another of our key drivers. To bring about change across the wider sector, we need the engagement and support of our clients to help challenge the way in-house legal teams interact with panel firms.

The General Counsel for Diversity & Inclusion group, of which we are a lead partner, provides a structure for private practice and client organisations to work together to improve diversity and inclusion across the profession, and the general counsels who established the group are to be commended for their foresight in enabling a framework for the “buy side” and the “sell side” to collectively nudge the profession to be more inclusive.

How, where and when work gets done – and by whom – is a key part of ensuring working practices do not disadvantage female team members, and so open communication lines between partners and clients are important.

To support this, we run annual GC Inclusion Forums, which provide an opportunity to engage directly with our clients on shifting working practices to improve diversity and inclusion in the broader sector.

Another of our Eight Drivers is flexible working. Flexible working empowers everyone to run their careers and lives in a more flexible way while delivering for clients. Because women often bear more of the care-giving burden, greater flexibility can make partnership more appealing.

In 2020 we launched Agile 60 – a global approach to flexible working which sets the expectation that most people can work 40% of their time from home, and 60% in the office. That’s been very well received by our people and clients.

Another driver is role modelling. We are focused on raising the visibility of women in senior leadership positions, but this does not mean that only women can be role models for gender equality. We're increasingly hearing from more junior women that they don't necessarily need a role model “in their own image”, that male partners can make excellent role models and support the careers of more junior women. This makes it even more important that we increase our focus on inclusive leadership as a key skill for any leader within a law firm.

Another driver I wanted to reflect on is inclusion and respect. Gender inequities exist because the workplace systems and cultures we have in place have tended to favour men, or masculine traits, over women or more feminine traits.

To achieve gender parity, we must identify and address barriers – in our firm and in society – that have held women back for centuries. This isn't a “women’s issue”, it's a structural one. People in leadership roles bear particular responsibility for bringing about change. But this work takes everyone – and it's essential that we all see gender equity as our responsibility, regardless of our own gender, role, or seniority in the firm.

We want our leaders to adopt behaviours – which we've mapped to the firm's core leadership competencies – that foster inclusivity in the workplace. To become inclusive leaders, we need to be aware of our unconscious biases and take steps to counteract them. We need leaders to have the courage to challenge the status quo, to listen more than tell, to stay curious as to the perspectives of others and to recognise that, for many women, other facets of identity can exacerbate challenges.

Trust in the legal profession is built when it reflects the communities and clients it serves. We must develop cultures that promote diversity and inclusion, as well as prevent sexual harassment, bullying, and discrimination.

Executive focus on this issue needs to be clear and sharp. Fatigue regarding the “gender issue” exists because of lack of focus and accountability, and so constantly rethinking our approach and listening to a range of perspectives as to how we can do better is key to us remaining at the forefront of this issue and driving progress.

Danielle is the Global Director of Culture & Inclusion at Herbert Smith Freehills. Through her work with clients, lawyers at HSF and the profession more broadly, she has become a recognised thought leader on diversity and inclusion. Danielle leads a team that works closely with clients in relation to the role each of us can play to shift workplace culture and the legal profession to be more inclusive. Working with the firm’s D&I Networks, she regularly leverages opportunities to make the link between diverse and inclusive cultures and innovation and creativity more explicit. Danielle is also a mentor and advisor to many partners across the firm.

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