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Only four out of 37 attorneys-general currently serving in Nigeria are female, and women occupy only 33 per cent of the senior roles in the country’s judiciary. These and other revelations are contained in a new report by the International Bar Association (IBA) Legal Policy & Research Unit (LPRU), which focused on gender disparity in Nigeria’s legal profession.
 
According to the data accumulated for the 50:50 by 2030: A Longitudinal Study into Gender Disparity in Law – Nigeria Results Report, 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).

“The NBA has consistently maintained the position that for us to achieve transformative change in the world, issues relating to gender equality and empowerment must be prioritised and addressed head-on,” Yakubu Chonoko Maikyau, SAN, President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), said in a statement sent to Financial Nigeria on the report. “We are, therefore, happy to identify with and support the IBA and LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation’s “50:50 by 2030” Gender Project. It is an innovative and unprecedented project through which the legal profession looks inwards. It has been shown empirically that any limitation on the capacity and capability of a woman is but a product of artificial imagination which is totally unjustifiable.”
 
The NBA President thanked all participating law firms, corporate organisations, public sector organisations and members of the judiciary who supported the report project in Nigeria and urged NBA members to study the report when it is published, learn from the data contained therein, and become champions of the change we want to see in Nigeria.

“Furthermore, I implore all bar associations and law societies to fully support this project when the spotlight is turned towards their jurisdictions,” he said.

Additional findings from the Nigeria report include: the three most popular gender equality initiatives are coaching and mentoring programmes, flexible working arrangements, and leadership training for women; the public sector and the judiciary do not have any specific policies or initiatives in place to push women to the top of their organisations; the least popular initiative is quota setting, and leadership training was considered by respondents to be the least effective; only 68 per cent of respondents said that they monitor gender representation overall and at a senior level; and only 40 per cent of corporate sector respondents monitor gender balance within senior roles.

Titilola Akinlawon, SAN, Founding Partner at Akinlawon & Ajomo, said the “50:50 by 2030” project’s most recent report on Nigeria finds that only 33 per cent of senior judges are female, and in both the judiciary and the public sector there are no initiatives in place to help women reach the top in their careers. This project will gather data from across all sectors of the profession, and across 16 jurisdictions, with the aim of identifying the root causes of gender inequality, tracking progress over time, and providing practical conclusions and guidance.

The Nigeria report marks the fourth set of findings from the project. The first report, considering the legal profession in England and Wales, was released in March 2022 with further reports on Uganda and Spain published in August and December 2022, respectively.
 
According to the statement, one notable trend across England and Wales, Nigeria, Spain, and Uganda is the high representation of female lawyers in the public sector. In England and Wales, 64 per cent of lawyers in the public sector are women, of which 57 per cent hold the most senior positions. Similarly, in Uganda, 57 per cent of lawyers in the public sector are female, with 62 per cent represented at a senior level. In the Spanish legal profession, 62 per cent of lawyers across the public sector are female, although in this jurisdiction, only 38 per cent are in the most senior positions. A similar trend is also observed in the Nigerian legal profession, with 68 per cent of female lawyers represented in the public sector and 61 per cent working in senior roles.

The nine-year global project, launched in 2021, was conceived by Almudena Arpón de Mendívil, IBA President and a partner at law firm Gómez-Acebo & Pombo in Madrid, Spain, who stated at its inception: “Despite good intentions, despite the merits and talent of so many women, we still don’t reach the most senior positions across the legal sector mainly due to discriminatory obstacles placed in our paths. This directly clashes with the principles defended by our profession. The legal sector cannot afford this contradiction and should lead by example. With the benefit of raised general awareness around discrimination, it is time for increased action. Through the “50:50 by 2030” global study the IBA aspires to build global empirical evidence on the barriers causing the disparity in figures between women and men in senior roles and to put forward remedies to rectify the situation in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goal on gender equality. We are committed to developing solutions that will bring about lasting change to reflect the broader profession and society as a whole.”

Legal professionals in Chile, the Netherlands, and the United Arab Emirates are to be surveyed next.

The International Bar Association is the foremost organisation for international legal practitioners, bar associations, and law societies. Established in 1947, shortly after the creation of the United Nations, it was born out of the conviction that an organisation made up of the world's bar associations could contribute to global stability and peace through the administration of justice.