International law firm Ashurst has announced it has set new diversity and inclusion targets to be achieved by financial year 2022.

Sustained focus

The new targets comprise: 33 per cent of the global partnership to be female, currently at 24 per cent; 30 per cent of legal management and leadership roles to be held by women, currently at 23 per cent, with 30 per cent of the global board now female; and, 50 per cent of senior business services roles to be held by women. Currently at 33 per cent. Managing partner, Paul Jenkins said ‘targets provide awareness and impetus for change and it is critical that we ensure sustained focus and continue to make progress. Our new target period has been reduced from five to three years for this reason and we now have a target for the whole partnership, have increased the target for females in leadership roles and introduced a gender target for business services leadership. Since the original gender targets were set, we have seen improvement in the gender balance of promotions to partnership, with 58 per cent of new partners in 2018 being female. We have also made progress with the proportion of women in leadership roles and are pleased that 30 per cent of our board is now female, 50 per cent of the elected positions. We remain very conscious of how much more needs to be done.’

More programmes

Recent gender diversity initiatives at Ashurst have included a ‘global committed to change’ initiative engaging partners to make a public and proactive commitment to diversity and inclusion as a method to harness the power of inclusive leadership, with the aim that every office and practice group has at least one local C2C member. A RISE programme, launched in 2018 bringing together female senior partners from across the firm to increase support networks. Also added have been a ‘calling out ‘campaign and a ‘male champions of change’ programme in Australia.