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For women in law who have long sensed that the rules feel different, that the day is longer, the margin thinner, the recovery heavier; this is not imagined, writes Rebecca Ward, MBA.
Professionalism in law is often described as neutral: a shared set of standards that apply equally to everyone. Dress well. Be prepared. Be courteous. Be resilient. These expectations sound modest enough. Yet, for many women in the profession, the cost of meeting them is rarely neutral and rarely counted.
An eight-hour workday in law is seldom eight hours for women. It is preceded by preparation that is not recognised as work but is essential to credibility: washed and blow-dried hair, carefully chosen clothing, compression garments, stockings, and high heels. It continues through long days that require physical endurance as much as intellectual stamina. None of this appears on a timesheet. All of it affects the body.
High heels are a useful place to start. In many legal workplaces, they are not formally required, yet they are widely understood to be expected. Flat shoes may be interpreted as casual; sensible shoes as insufficiently polished. Over time, the physical consequences accumulate: joint strain, altered gait, chronic pain. No one ever says that professionalism will cost cartilage, but it often does. What is framed as appearance is, in practice, a daily bodily tax.
This expectation sits alongside other quiet demands. Women are expected to manage discomfort discreetly: cramps, bloating, fatigue, pregnancy symptoms, post-partum recovery, and later, menopause. The professional ideal remains the same: calm, composed, unaffected. Endurance is praised, but the body that must endure is treated as incidental.
A well-known observation about dance captures the asymmetry neatly: “Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards, and in high heels.” The point is not comparison, but choreography. The steps are similar; the conditions are not.
Much of this labour extends beyond the visible workday. Social expectations blur the boundary between professional and personal time. After-hours drinks, informal networking, celebrations, and farewells are framed as optional, yet absence is noticed. Participation becomes another form of professional signalling, one that consumes time, energy, and money without ever appearing in a role description.
There is also the less visible work of emotional regulation. Women are often expected to be warm, approachable, and collegial, not merely competent. Feedback about “tone”, “approachability”, or “social presence” rarely refers to output. It refers to conformity with unspoken norms. These norms are not maliciously enforced; they are inherited. But they are enforced nonetheless.
The cumulative effect is a form of hidden workload. An eight-hour day quietly expands into 12 or 13 once preparation, commuting, social participation, and recovery are included. The cost is not only time, but also psychological. Stress-related conditions, disrupted sleep, and chronic pain are often treated as individual resilience issues rather than predictable outcomes of sustained pressure.
What follows is an unspoken aftercare economy. Massage to manage pain. Psychology to manage stress. Health insurance to manage risk. Alcohol, for some, is a socially sanctioned decompression tool. These are often described as “self-care”, but in many cases, they function as repair; the cost of remaining functional in an environment that demands more than it acknowledges.
These pressures intensify at particular life stages. Pregnancy is frequently treated as a temporary inconvenience to be managed quietly, rather than a profound physiological event. Post-baby returns to work are shaped by sleep deprivation, feeding logistics, and the mental load of childcare coordination, all while professional expectations remain unchanged. Menopause, still rarely named in professional settings, brings cognitive and physical symptoms that are often misread as declining capability rather than a natural transition.
Overlay this with pay disparity, and the picture sharpens. When women are paid less on average while simultaneously incurring higher professional costs, aesthetic, physical, and health-related, the gap widens beyond salary figures alone. Even where pay is equal, outcomes are not necessarily so.
None of this is about blame. Many of these norms were not consciously designed, and many men in the profession may never encounter these costs directly or even contemplate them – not through malice, but through indifference. The issue is not intent; it is accounting.
Professionalism is not a fixed concept. It evolves. Practices once considered essential, from rigid dress codes to excessive working hours, have already shifted in response to evidence and experience. Questioning whether current expectations remain fit for purpose is not radical. It is consistent with a profession that prides itself on reasoned analysis.
The aim is not to lower standards, but to examine what has been bundled into them. When professionalism quietly requires physical pain, ongoing recovery, and disproportionate adaptation, it is worth asking whether the standard itself needs refinement.
For women in law who have long sensed that the rules feel different, that the day is longer, the margin thinner, the recovery heavier; this is not imagined. And for those who have not noticed, that too is instructive. Visibility changes what is counted. And what is counted, eventually, can be changed.
Rebecca Ward is an MBA-qualified management consultant with a focus on mental health. She is the managing director of Barrister’s Health, which supports the legal profession through management consulting and psychotherapy. Barrister’s Health was founded in memory of her brother, Steven Ward, LLB.
