Fatherhood, gender and professional identity in large law firms: bringing men into the frame

What is it about?

This paper reframes the debate about gender equality in the legal professions by interrogating the experiences of fatherhood within large corporate law firms. Drawing on interviews with male lawyer-fathers, it argues that closer exploration of fatherhood reveals much about the gendered nature of professional identity in this sector of the profession. Importantly, political-economic and cultural shifts around fatherhood are reconfiguring and adapting gender relations in law in a number of ways with implications for understanding the place of men in gender-equality debates in the law. Ideas about fatherhood, family, work and career, the paper argues, are mobilised and enmeshed within the reproduction of distinctive law-firm cultures and gendered ideas of organisational commitment. What, in short, might it mean to be both a ‘good father’ and a ‘good lawyer’?

Featured Image

Why is it important?

The paper ‘turns on its head’ the debate about gender equality and parenting in the law by exploring the practices and experiences of male lawyers. More specifically, it unpacks key features of the gendered nature of professional identity in the legal profession, revealing how social changes are impacting on understandings of fatherhood and exploring their implications for the legal profession itself.