WIMBIZ advocates gender balance in legal profession

The Women in Management, Business and Public Service has unveiled efforts to address a significant gender disparity within the Nigerian legal profession.

These efforts were disclosed at a media parley held at the WIMBIZ headquarters in Lagos on Thursday.

A report published by the International Bar Association Legal Policy & Research Unit disclosed that women make up approximately 40 per cent of all lawyers in Nigeria.

The country’s public sector has the highest representation of women in senior positions, with 61 per cent of practitioners being female, followed by the corporate sector, with 55 per cent. Law firms have the second lowest number of women in senior roles (43 per cent), behind the judiciary (33 per cent). Also, only four per cent of the over 700 Senior Advocates of Nigeria are female.

Speaking on the gender imbalance in the profession, the Executive Director of WIMBIZ, Omowunmi Akingbohungbe, said the organisation has identified “some key major gaps” in the legal sector, with the underrepresentation of women as SANs being a prime example.

To tackle this imbalance, WIMBIZ has initiated several key activities aimed at sensitising and empowering women in the legal profession, both upcoming and experienced, to attain leadership positions.

She said, “I must reiterate that for the year 2025, we have a special focus on women in law. We have identified some key major gaps in that sector. So we’re trying to address these gaps and get professionals in that space to amplify the gaps and also sensitise women, upcoming lawyers, and existing ones on how they can attain leadership positions.

“We started that initiative first of all through this webinar where we had Justices here in Nigeria as well as the Senior Advocates (of Nigeria) come to talk about their stories and journey as far as getting to these positions, the barriers they faced, and how they were able to navigate it.

“Then we had the stakeholder session, which is also focused on women in law. This was a gathering of judges, law firm partners, chief legal counsels of corporate organisations, as well as senior advocates, both male and female. We came together to discuss the barriers that exist as well as the leadership pathways, four of which we have identified.

“And having a breakout session, each of them dialogue on what can be done to make the journey easier when you’re a woman. So from this stakeholder dialogue session, we were able to get insights, directions and pathways, four of them to be precise that we are going to put in a journal which will be easily accessible for people in law school as well as lawyers who are just about to graduate so it becomes a reference point that they can refer to and see how they’re going to navigate the journey.”

Akingbohungbe noted that a major outcome of the engagements is the Women in Law Mentoring Programme.

“This is a group mentoring session where we get all the registered participants and mentees to be sensitised, first on the leadership pathways that we’ve identified from the previous stakeholder engagement, get them to determine what pathway they want to pursue, and then they are mentored along that pathway.

“The expected outcome is that each mentee in this mentoring programme has a work plan that they want to run with for the next five years or 10 years, as the case may be, in attaining the position that they aspire to be. It’s a three-month programme, and it will be a bi-weekly session, and it’s also happening virtually,” Akingbohungbe noted.

Beyond bridging the gap in the law profession, Akingbohungbe noted that WIMBIZ was also sensitising women to property ownership.

“That’s another gap there. So this forum was pretty much sensitising women on how they can go about acquiring properties, the savings and initiatives that they can leverage to make acquiring their property easier for them,” she said.

Through these targeted initiatives, WIMBIZ is actively working to amplify the awareness of the gender gap within the senior ranks of the Nigerian legal profession and provide concrete support and guidance to empower women to ascend to these leadership positions, ultimately aiming for a more balanced and inclusive legal landscape.

Meanwhile, WIMBIZ Board Chair, Bisi Adeyemi, has also emphasised the organisation’s broader commitment to addressing injustice, stating they are monitoring certain developments and would “speak up if necessary.”

On the Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan case at the National Assembly, Adeyemi said the association was monitoring the situation.

“We are monitoring the situation and as soon as we see injustice going on, we will step into the situation,” Adeyemi said.

A WIMBIZ board of trustees member, Rolake Akinkugbe-Filani, highlighted the misconception that promoting women in leadership is tokenism, stressing that data supports the fact that inclusion makes both business and economic sense.

“I think one of the biggest misconceptions we have today, and it’s not just exclusive to Nigeria, it’s global, is that somehow encouraging more women in leadership is tokenism. Every time you have a conversation about having more women in leadership positions and having more women represented in different facets of life, the issue of pushing gender quotas or trying to push one agenda comes up.

“Whereas what people are missing is the fact that there is data to support and back up the fact that inclusion makes business sense and it makes economic sense. I think that’s one of the misconceptions we see.”