Women Lead Canada's Legal Profession, Gaps Persist, says IBA Report

Women now make up the majority of Canada’s legal profession, but significant barriers to equality, particularly in leadership positions and workplace culture, continue to hinder their career progression, according to a new report by the International Bar Association (IBA).

Raising the Bar Women in Law Project – Canada Results Report revealed that women make up 53% of all lawyers and 51% of senior lawyers and partners in the organizations surveyed. While women lawyers made progress in this area, many continued to report incidents of gender-based discrimination, sexual harassment and unequal treatment in the workplace.

The report is the 16th country study in the IBA's global Raising the Bar: Women in Law Project, a joint initiative between the IBA's Legal Policy & Research Unit (LPRU), the Canadian Bar Association and the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, which looks at gender parity in the legal profession.

The results show significant variations by practice areas. Women represent 60% of lawyers in the public and in-house sectors, with the same level of representation at senior positions. But at private law firms, women make up just 43% of lawyers, and less than 35% of those at the senior level and 36% at the board/committee level. In Canada, there are also 48% judicial officers who are women.

Key Highlights:

• Women now make up 53% of Canada's lawyers, becoming the majority in the legal profession
• Gender gaps remain in leadership, especially in private law firms and senior roles
• Flexible work, mentoring and diversity initiatives are helping improve women's career progression

The report reveals that 93% of the firms, corporations and public sector organizations that responded to the survey track gender representation across their company, including in senior leadership roles, and that the rate of companies taking such action is on the rise.

The evolution of the makeup of Canada's highest court is one of the report's major achievements. Since the end of 2023, the Supreme Court of Canada has been composed of five female and four male justices.

The achievement is an important milestone, but it's not meant to mask the persistent challenges that remain in the profession, said Louis-Martin Beaumont, President of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, commenting on the results.

He said the legal profession is undergoing a "historic transformation" in its composition, but work and workplace models have not kept up. The fact that there is still a disparity between the diversity of those appointed to the bench and the lack of diversity in law firms and legal organizations reflects the profession's transition, said Beaumont.

This report is based on a survey that polled some 8,762 practicing lawyers, or about 8 per cent of non-judicial lawyers in Canada. It also features 1,500-plus responses from female attorneys on their “at work” experiences.

The report reflects national statistics from the National Regulatory Authority which indicate that the profession is nearing gender parity—55,667 women to 57,747 men. As of September 2024, 57% of lawyers and notaries in Quebec were women, illustrating a trend of demographic shifts. The report also indicates that more young lawyers are females, but the gender gap grows as lawyers become more senior.

Mentoring programs and unconscious bias training and coaching were the most common workplace initiatives. One of the most significant initiatives identified for high impact actions that contribute to the retention of women and their advancement was flexible working arrangements. While quotas and targets were the least common, organizations that had them ranked them as the most effective of the methods used for enhancing gender representation.

Although the report shows that Canada does fairly well when compared to a number of jurisdictions analyzed as part of the IBA project, it underscores the need for ongoing and continued efforts to increase the proportion of women in senior leadership roles and to foster work environments that encourage women to stay in their careers and advance.