Law Society of Scotland gender pay gap is 21 per cent

Gender balance - Image credit: Fotolia

The Law Society of Scotland has published its gender pay gap figures for the first time this week, although it was not obliged to do so because it has less than 250 staff.

The median pay gap between men and women at the organisation is 21 per cent in favour of men, while the mean gap is 17 per cent.

The Law Society has 127 employees, 71 per cent of whom are female.

But just over half of female Law Society staff have pay within the lower and lower middle quartiles, compared with 37 per cent of male staff.

While there are more women than men in the top quartile, 17 women and 15 men, this represents only 19 per cent of all female staff.

Men make up 29 per cent of the total workforce, but represent 46 per cent of the top quartile.

Lorna Jack, chief executive of the Law Society of Scotland, said: “While we have fewer than 250 employees and are not legally required to report, we are choosing to publish our gender pay gap because we recognise that achieving gender equality in the workplace is important.

“Working towards gender equality in the workplace is everyone’s responsibility and should not be viewed as an issue that only concerns women – we all benefit.

Jack said that as a smaller organisation, even limited changes in personnel could cause substantial fluctuations but that the organisation intended to work towards reducing its gender pay gap.

She continued: “We have committed to undertaking unconscious bias training for all our managers this year and are examining how we can use our well-received mentoring programme for solicitors to benefit our staff team at the Law Society.

“We will continue to be agile in our approach to career paths within the organisation and ensure we promote flexible working to all staff, which can be taken up by those who have caring responsibilities or want to pursue other interests and opportunities outside work.

“When we recruit new members of staff we will measure the gender breakdown of applications at each stage of the recruitment process.”