Struggling with juggling: gender and work/life balance in the legal professions

Abstract

Since the 1960s, women have begun emerging into the public sphere and the public/private divide has been eroding. However, women's participation in the public sphere remains limited by the ongoing need to do two jobs (`the double day?), working both in the home and in the labour market. Thus, a study conducted into gender difference in the legal professions in Ireland [Bacik, Ivana, Costello, Cathryn, and Drew, Eileen (2003), Gender InJustice: Feminising the legal professions?, Trinity College Dublin Law School, Dublin.] found that, while women are entering legal studies in increasing numbers, they remain concentrated at the lower levels of practice. Women lawyers have immense difficulty in achieving work/life balance, due to the long hours culture, an ingrained hostility to flexible work arrangements, and to the fact that they retain a disproportionate caring burden in the private sphere. Changes in the structuring of legal work are clearly required to address this gender imbalance and the associated work/life imbalance ? but cultural changes are ultimately needed to end the ongoing ?struggle to juggle.?