AS an organisation which works for equality across the legal profession, the Law Society of Scotland has embarrassingly had to admit that it pays its male workers more than its women overall.
Reporting its gender pay gap for the first time, the society revealed that the median pay gap between men and women at the organisation is 21 per cent in favour of men.
This year the Law Society will undertake a profession-wide equality and diversity census and says it has been “encouraging law firms to adopt our equality standards.”
The Law Society has 127 employees of whom some 71 per cent are female. The mean pay gap is 17 per cent in favour of men.
A breakdown of staffing levels at the Law Society showed that on a percentage basis, men are filling more of the higher roles than women. There are 17 women and 15 men in the top quartile at the Law Society, but while there are more women than men in that group, this represents 19 per cent of all female staff. Men make up 29 per cent of the total workforce but represent 46 per cent of the top quartile.
Just over half, at 54 per cent, of female staff at the Law Society have roles within the lower and lower-middle quartiles, whereas 37 per cent of male staff work in that group.
Lorna Jack, chief executive of the Law Society of Scotland said: “We are committed to championing gender equality. While we have fewer than 250 employees and are not legally required to report, we are choosing to publish our gender pay gap because we recognise that achieving gender equality in the workplace is important.
“Working towards gender equality in the workplace is everyone’s responsibility and should not be viewed as an issue that only concerns women – we all benefit.
“We intend to work towards reducing our gender pay gap. We have committed to undertaking unconscious bias training for all our managers this year and are examining how we can use our well-received mentoring programme for solicitors to benefit our staff team at the Law Society.
“We will continue to be agile in our approach to career paths within the organisation and ensure we promote flexible working to all staff, which can be taken up by those who have caring responsibilities or want to pursue other interests and opportunities outside work.”
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here