Political journalist Annabel Crabb was the inaugural speaker at Baker & McKenzie’s latest initiative to address the lack of women in senior roles within the legal profession: The Kathleen Thornton Memorial Conversation. Launched yesterday (March 14), the firm will invite other respected and successful women to speak at the firm, on a twice yearly basis, about their own personal experiences in order to inspire and guide female staff and clients through their own careers.

The firm-wide program BakerWomen has already launched a series of roundtables and internal talks to assist female staff, including roundtables specifically aimed at women in transactional roles. “The BakerWomen initiative is about addressing the issue of talent leaving the profession and an attempt to help women achieve their career goals,” said Baker & McKenzie partner Maria O'Brien. 

Crabb said that in politics, like law, there were successful women who had made it to the top, as long as they had what she referred to as a “wife” to help them. In her own day-to-day life, she said she had built a team of wives to assist her with managing the role of mother and political journalist including her husband, assistant, friend, au pair and hair stylist. 

 Crabb said that on returning to Australia with a six month-old daughter her husband took 10 months off from work so that he could spend time with the child, while she worked at The Sydney Morning Herald. Although, she added, it was not without trepidation that he made that choice and even discussed alibis as to why he was not returning immediately back to his job. “We need to stop the perception that it is an anomaly if men work part-time,” she said.

Flexibility for men and women in workplaces was a key message from Crabb, who admitted that within media companies, there was still a perception that you had to be at your desk all the time in order to succeed.  “People know that if you work three days a week, you are really working four days because you become better at doing things in a lesser amount of time,” said Crabb. “There are productivity gains to me made by susceptible employers… it needs to be driven by determined people.” 

Baker & McKenzie was one of 16 law firms to be named this week as an ‘Employer of Choice for Women' by the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA).  Each year the agency releases a list of employers that recognise and advance their female workforce and meet the criteria set by the agency to be named an employer of choice. A total of 125 non-government organisations in Australia made the list this year. The law firms are: 

• Allens Arthur Robinson
• Ashurst Australia
• Baker & McKenzie
• Clayton Utz
• Cooper Grace Ward
• Corrs Chambers Westgarth
• Freehills
• Gilbert + Tobin
• Henry Davis York
• Holding Redlich
• King & Wood Mallesons
• Maddocks
• McCullough Robertson
• Middletons
• Minter Ellison
• Norton Rose Australia