England and Wales has one of the world’s worst gaps between the proportion of lawyers who are women and those in senior positions, the International Bar Association reported today.

A progress report on the IBA’s 50:50 by 2030 study on gender disparity in law found that in jurisdictions across five continents, women make up an overall 47% of legal professionals. However that proportion drops to only 38% of lawyers in senior positions, defined as partnership or above. 

As well as England and Wales, Chile and Spain had the largest gaps between the number of female lawyers overall and the number in positions of responsibility. Ukraine, the Netherlands, Türkiye and Nigeria had the highest proportions of senior female laywers.

In England and Wales, female lawyers overall make up 51% of the profession but only 32% of senior roles. Chile had the highest overall proportion of women lawyers and Ukraine had the highest proportion of women among senior lawyers (53%). 

Globally, the public sector is the closest to achieving gender parity overall (49%). The judiciary is ‘close behind’, the report said, with 43% of all judges female; 38% of judges holding senior positions are women. 

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The progress report is based on data collected from around 170,000 lawyers and judges in 12 jurisdictions. The studies, undertaken between 2021 and 2024, consisted of a survey, desk-based research and ‘conversations held with legal practitioners, women lawyers’ associations and other relevant in-country stakeholders’.

Speaking at the launch of the progress report, Almudena Arpón de Mendívil, IBA president, said: ‘This report confirms what we already suspected. The glass ceiling, in order to reach senior positions at our legal profession, is still powerful.’

She acknowledged ‘improvements have been made’ but it was important that women who had reached senior positions and become leaders in the legal sector were not ‘shooting stars’.

Arpón de Mendívil added: ‘We need to have a sustainable female leadership because…progress may not be as solid as we think, it may be more fragile. We cannot relax, we have to continue making the effort to advance and most of all we cannot step back just for one millimetre.’