Workplace discrimination is still pervasive throughout the legal profession, says the Law Society of Alberta.

While discrimination against female lawyers in Alberta has declined during the past decade, work still needs to be done with respect to discrimination on the basis of gender, race, sexual orientation and disability, according to a recently released survey on equity and diversity in the legal profession.

“In order to see exactly what we are dealing with, we commissioned a survey to find out what the realities are,” said Larry Anderson, president of the law society. “We were pleased to see that things have improved
somewhat but we also found some unpleasant results.

“There is a great deal of work to do to improve the working environment for certain groups of lawyers.”

The 2003 Equity and Diversity survey showed that progress has been made since a similar survey in 1991.

But among current survey respondents, 39 per cent of women lawyers, 41 per cent of lawyers of colour, 28 per cent of lawyers with a non-Christian religious affiliation, 40 per cent of lawyers with a disability, and 40 per cent of gay, lesbian and bisexual lawyers reported that they had experienced discrimination firsthand while seeking employment or during the course of employment in the past five years.

For all the diversity groups, other lawyers and clients were most commonly responsible for the discrimination.

Discrimination was most commonly manifested in the forms of racist and sexist comments; denial of opportunities to work on files; exclusion from opportunities to be involved in workplace activities related to career advancement; exclusion from work-related social or business development activities related to career advancement; and negative career consequences as a result of having children or being a parent.

In addition, the survey indicated sexual harassment continues to be a serious problem in the profession.

Women respondents worked at least as many hours as men respondents. Women without children worked significantly more hours than women with children and men with or without children.

“The legal profession now needs to rise to the challenge of accepting that there is still discrimination in the workplace, and take greater steps to address it,” said Anderson.