Victims of neo-liberalism: Why so few women in Australian law firms reach the top and stay there

For years now, rafts of possible measures have been mooted. Some have been tried, with little or at best modest success; some are still talked about. But none of them go to the heart of the real problem.

Thus, "mentoring" programs for women, improved "corporate governance" of law firms, tougher public reporting requirements of female numbers/pay scales etc., informal "quotas" or "targets" – while not necessarily bad in themselves, these steps have amounted to little more than window-dressing.

Somewhat more to the point, I think, are suggestions that parental leave entitlements be made more generous; that childcare arrangements be upgraded and subsidised; and/or that part-time work be encouraged – in each case for both women and men.

Such measures, it is argued, should enable women more readily to balance the competing demands of work and parenthood.

The aim is to help women overcome the so-called "maternal wall."

Steps of this kind may well be just and desirable, though it's a moot point whether today's breed of corporate clients are prepared to tolerate any arrangement which reduces their level of continuous access to a key lawyer (such as part-time work) or which increases their legal costs (overheads must either be passed on or absorbed).

In any event, and with due respect to those who think otherwise, this too is tinkering on the edges. At best, such measures may make life a bit more bearable for the senior lawyers who choose to stay in the workforce after becoming mothers.

There is indeed a "maternal wall" in Australian law firms. It looms large for all heterosexual women as they approach their thirties – if not earlier – but its causes and effects are, in my view, misrepresented or misunderstood.

There is an elephant in the roomful of lawyers and sociologists seeking to explain the lack of women at the top in commercial law firms. That elephant is called neo-liberalism – or, as the American writer Robert Reich has dubbed it, super-capitalism.

In the early 1980s, the West embarked upon a period of profound political-economic change. The process continues to this day, having been but briefly interrupted by the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-9.

The main features of super-capitalism are unregulated free markets, intense competition for market share amongst the providers of goods and services, vastly increased consumer choice, vastly reduced job security, and near-unprecedented disparities of wealth and income (which grow wider every year).

All aspects of life have been affected. Once venerable professions such as the law have been affected to a radical degree, and the profession itself is in large part to blame.