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Equality: getting back on track

29 January 2021 / Dana Denis-Smith
Issue: 7918 / Categories: Features , Profession , Equality
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The impacts of COVID-19 risk turning back the clock on women’s equality: Dana Denis-Smith lays out a road to recovery

It has been widely reported that the coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdowns have had a disproportionate impact on women. They are more likely than men to pick up the additional work within the home associated with educating and caring for their children, even when both parents are at home and work full-time. They are also more likely to work in positions that have been furloughed or made redundant.

Our own survey of women in the legal profession, conducted during the spring lockdown of 2020 and then again in October, have tracked women’s experiences through the pandemic, which at the outset saw women lawyers experiencing exhaustion as they tried to balance childcare with work.

Six months after the first lockdown, almost a quarter still had not seen their incomes return to pre-coronavirus levels, with one in five working less than their previous working hours.

32% worked for organisations which had made redundancies

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

DWF—19 appointments

DWF—19 appointments

Belfast team bolstered by three senior hires and 16 further appointments

Cadwalader—Andro Atlaga

Cadwalader—Andro Atlaga

Firm strengthens leveraged finance team with London partner hire

Knights—Ella Dodgson & Rebecca Laffan

Knights—Ella Dodgson & Rebecca Laffan

Double hire marks launch of family team in Leeds

NEWS
Small law firms want to embrace technology but feel lost in a maze of jargon, costs and compliance fears, writes Aisling O’Connell of the Solicitors Regulation Authority in this week's NLJ
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
Charlie Mercer and Astrid Gillam of Stewarts crunch the numbers on civil fraud claims in the English courts, in this week's NLJ. New data shows civil fraud claims rising steadily since 2014, with the King’s Bench Division overtaking the Commercial Court as the forum of choice for lower-value disputes
Bea Rossetto of the National Pro Bono Centre makes the case for ‘General Practice Pro Bono’—using core legal skills to deliver life-changing support, without the need for niche expertise—in this week's NLJ
Charles Pigott of Mills & Reeve reports on Haynes v Thomson, the first judicial application of the Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland ruling in a discrimination claim, in this week's NLJ
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