Celebrating International Women’s Day

Each year in March, International Women’s Day (IWD) events are held globally to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women around the world, and as a call to action for accelerating women’s equality. 

In preparing for our upcoming IWD Breakfast “In conversation with Sam Mostyn AO” on Tuesday 16 March 2021, I was surprised to learn that while IWD was not an official global event until the United Nations declared it so in 1977,  it has been celebrated for more than a century, with the first gathering in 1911 supported by more than one million people. 

The UN theme for IWD 2021 is “Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world”. 

Challenging gender bias and inequality in Australia is a cause that our IWD guest speaker, Sam Mostyn, has been championing during her exceptional career, with an eye to generating positive impact for generations to come. Sam has immense experience in the Australian corporate sector both in executive and non-executive capacities in the areas of human resources, corporate and government affairs, sustainability management and diversity, as well as a long history of sports governance. She chairs Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety, is president of Chief Executive Women, and deputy chair of the Centre for Policy Development.

Sam began her career working as a solicitor for Gilbert + Tobin, at a time when women were well outnumbered by men in the legal profession. While that is no longer the case, impediments to the retention and career progression of women in the profession remain. I will be really interested to hear Sam’s views on how we minimise barriers to workplace participation, accelerate gender equality and ultimately create a more inclusive workplace. 

I do hope you can join me at our IWD event during which I will launch the Law Society’s revamped Charter for the Advancement for Women in the Legal Profession – an important set of guidelines designed to promote and support strategies to retain women from all backgrounds in the profession over the course of their careers, including women with disability, and encourage and promote their career progression into leadership, senior executive and management positions. It also includes new provisions to prompt signatories to establish procedurally fair and transparent sexual discrimination and harassment complaints processes. 

The revision of the Charter is part of our ongoing work to address sexual harassment in the legal workplace and drive positive change through our policy work, advocacy and regulatory functions. On that note, we welcome the announcement that Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Kate Jenkins, will lead an independent review into the Commonwealth Parliament’s workplace culture.  

Juliana Warner, President, the Law Society of NSW

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