Linklaters celebrates International Women's Day 2021

As part of our celebrations for International Women’s Day 2021, people across our global network have come together to champion this year’s #ChoosetoChallenge campaign.

We asked our global network to share how they’ve been helping to forge a gender equal world by calling out gender bias and inequality. From challenge comes change.

International Women’s Day celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women and marks a call to action for accelerating gender equality. Linklaters has a long-standing commitment to gender equality and is committed to the following priorities:

• Creating a balanced and sustainable pipeline of female talent at every career level and in every practice and office as part of our 50/50 pipeline commitment.
• Ensuring women have greater development and sponsorship opportunities through our talent programmes, including our Women’s Leadership Programme for senior associates (started in 2012), and Stepping Forward, our group coaching programme for more junior female associates (started in 2017).
• Leading the way with our parental leave and support benefits, including our New Parent Leave Policy (in the UK) which gives any employee whose partner is having a baby via pregnancy, surrogacy or adoption, the opportunity to take 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave at any time during the first 12 months.
• Being agile in our approach to working arrangements and career paths, enabling us to attract and retain diverse talent at all career stages, and support our people to manage their work and personal lives. Our Global Agile Working Policy confirms that our people can decide when and where they work, no permission required.
• Developing our leaders’ understanding of different people’s perspectives and experiences, and their responsibilities to create an inclusive culture. This is through initiatives such as Inclusive Culture training, a focus on psychological safety (the theme for our celebrations during Diversity Week), sharing diverse stories, our ‘Teach Yourself’ Resource Hubs, the Reverse Mentoring scheme, and our innovative Career Storyboard workshop – an immersive visual experience highlighting the many subtle and complex factors that affect female recruitment, retention and progression.
• Launching a new Domestic Abuse policy and package of support to ensure our people are free to live and work in a supportive and safe environment.

Claudia Parzani, Managing Partner for Western Europe and Global Gender Champion at Linklaters, comments:
“In order to bring about change and finally make gender equality a reality we must all challenge ourselves and others to call out inequality when we see it. As a firm, we are committed to dismantling barriers to gender equality and creating a truly inclusive culture. Alongside our programmes and initiatives to promote women in their careers, we will continue to step forward for women and champion women’s achievements.”

Andreas Steck, Senior Partner in Germany and Global Gender Champion at Linklaters, comments:
“This year’s International Women’s Day falls amid a global pandemic and we know that global crises never have a gender neutral impact. We must continue to drive forward change whilst continuously adapting to meet the needs of our people during this unprecedented time to ensure Covid-19 doesn’t set back progress.”

Read more about Diversity & Inclusion at Linklaters here.