The price women attorneys pay for being mothers in South African law firms

Abstract

This paper presents the findings of a study undertaken amongst women attorneys in South Africa, to determine the impact motherhood has on their legal career. The argument is that motherhood is incompatible with the hyper-competitive male dominant professional culture of the legal profession. The paper employs Edgar Schein's concept of organisational culture and Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of field, habitus and culture to understand how women continue to experience unequal outcome in their careers, despite the removal of formal barriers and the enactment of laws and policies. The concepts further illuminate how and why the male dominant culture of the profession embeds itself and remains one of the hardest elements to change. The study was furthermore underpinned by a feminist standpoint epistemology, interviewing 27 attorneys across three corporate law firms in South Africa. The key findings show that when becoming a mother, many women attorneys experience a disjuncture between their mothering and professional role, which is attributed to the hyper-competitive culture of the profession. This leads to many women having less successful legal careers which is manifested in different ways. These findings demonstrate how women are perpetually marginalized in the profession and why we continue to see the lack of women in the senior ranks of the profession despite a robust legal and policy framework promoting equality.