The International Bar Association (IBA) has launched the second phase of its ambitious 50:50 by 2030 gender equality project, which seeks to address the lack of gender parity at senior levels across the legal profession.

The IBA’s Legal Policy and Research Unit will undertake the project’s next phase in collaboration with the charitable foundation of leading US legal publisher LexisNexis, starting with a worldwide survey aimed at all female practitioners across various legal sectors.

The survey seeks to understand the experiences of individual women practitioners, including obstacles to practising law, reasons for considering leaving the field, opinions on diversity initiatives, the effects of menopause and the impact of caring responsibilities on women’s careers.

The initiative was one of the key presidential priorities of the IBA’s immediate past president, Spanish lawyer Almudena Arpón de Mendívil Aldama, during her two-year tenure. The first phase led to 11 gender reports on jurisdictions including the UK, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Mexico, among others spanning five continents. The initiative won an award at the 2024 Women and Diversity in Law Awards, organised by this title.

On leaving office, Arpón de Mendívil – only the second woman to hold the IBA’s highest office – endorsed a progress report comparing the project’s findings to date and identifying key themes and initial recommendations.

The anonymous survey can be completed in English, Spanish, French or Portuguese. A previous study, undertaken in 2017, aimed at women working in corporate law firms received more than 6,000 responses.

As part of the launch, the IBA hosted a free webinar on 7 March, hosted by the IBA Legal Policy & Research Unit (LPRU) and supported by the IBA Women Lawyers’ Committee and the IBA Diversity and Inclusion Council. The webinar explored women’s experiences in the law, questioning whether initiatives to recruit and retain women are working and what more needs to be done.

Jaime Carey, this year’s IBA president, emphasised the importance of building on the work of his predecessor regarding the lack of gender parity in the legal profession.

“By gathering data from individual women on the various aspects that impact their careers in the legal profession, we can better understand the results [the first phase] that demonstrated that the glass ceiling preventing women’s advancement to senior roles is very powerful,” he said. “Our goal is to enhance and broaden strategies that will accelerate the advancement of gender equality.”

The IBA also launched a new podcast series ‘Inspirational Legal Women’, which features conversations with IBA members who share their thoughts and experiences about what it means to be a woman in the legal profession.

The first episode featured Deborah Enix-Ross, a senior adviser with Debevoise & Plimpton and a former president of the American Bar Association, with subsequent episodes planned to feature women from different countries every two weeks until the end of July.

Sara Carnegie, IBA director of legal projects, said: “The podcast series celebrates women’s resilience, brilliance and impact in law – amplifying their voices, sharing their journeys and shaping a more equitable future for the profession.”

The Global Legal Post, a media partner of the IBA, will again publish its daily conference magazine, IBA Daily News, at the annual IBA conference in Toronto, Canada in November.

This year’s edition of the Women and Diversity in Law Awards will be held in London at the Hilton Bankside on 18 March, for which tickets are available.