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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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Freeths—Melanie Stancliffe

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Firm strengthens employment team with partner hire

DAC Beachcroft—Tim Barr

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NEWS
Tech companies will be legally required to prevent material that encourages or assists serious self-harm appearing on their platforms, under Online Safety Act 2023 regulations due to come into force in the autumn
Commercial leasehold, the defence of insanity and ‘consent’ in the criminal law are among the next tranche of projects for the Law Commission
The Bar has a culture of ‘impunity’ and ‘collusive bystanding’ in which making a complaint is deemed career-ending due to a ‘cohort of untouchables’ at the top, Baroness Harriet Harman KC has found
Lawyers have broadly welcomed plans to electronically tag up to 22,000 more offenders, scrap most prison terms below a year and make prisoners ‘earn’ early release
David Lammy, Ellie Reeves and Baroness Levitt have taken up office at the Ministry of Justice, following the cabinet reshuffle
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