Mary Gaudron’s unfinished challenge to the legal profession

Her generation, she recalled, had thought that breaking down the barriers to entry would make success inevitable. Yet opening those doors had not produced the transformation many had expected.

“The trouble with the women of my generation is that we thought if we knocked the doors down, success would be inevitable: the trouble with the men of your generation is that so many still think that, if they hold the doors open, we will be forever grateful,” she said.

Gaudron recalled writing those words to a fellow High Court judge during her speech at the launch of Australian Women Lawyers on 19 September 1997.

By then, she had spent a decade as the first woman appointed to the High Court of Australia. She had broken barriers across the legal profession and helped reshape Australian law through her advocacy and judicial work.

But her message that evening was not one of unqualified celebration.

The removal of explicit exclusions, she argued, had not delivered equality at the profession’s highest levels. Women remained underrepresented in senior partnerships, among leading advocates and in the judiciary.

VIEW ALL

Almost three decades later, following Gaudron’s death at the age of 83, her extraordinary career is being remembered for the barriers she broke and the opportunities she created.

Yet her 1997 address offers another way to understand her legacy: as a challenge to examine what happens after women gain entry to a profession that was never designed with them in mind.

It is a question that remains pertinent in a legal profession where women now constitute a majority of lawyers, but their representation continues to narrow at some of its most senior levels.

The making of a trailblazer

Gaudron’s career was remarkable by almost any measure.

Born in Moree, NSW, in 1943, she graduated from the University of Sydney with a law degree in 1965 and was admitted to the NSW Bar in 1968.

In 1972, she became the first woman appointed to the NSW Bar Council. She subsequently served as deputy president of the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, became NSW’s first female Queen’s counsel and was appointed solicitor-general of NSW.

Her appointment to the High Court in 1987 made her the first woman to sit on Australia’s highest court, a position she held until 2003.

However, Gaudron’s contribution to Australian law extended well beyond her succession of historic appointments.

She successfully appeared for the Commonwealth in the landmark 1972 Equal Pay Case, advocating for the principle of equal pay for work of equal value, and later participated in the Arbitration Commission’s work on maternity leave.

As a High Court justice, she contributed to decisions that helped shape Australian constitutional law and the recognition of native title, including Mabo v Queensland (No 2) and Wik Peoples v Queensland.

Her achievements were all the more significant given the conditions in which she pursued them.

In her 1997 speech, Gaudron recalled approaching the Women Lawyers Association of NSW as a university student after female students had been told that some city firms did not employ women as articled clerks.

She also recounted how longstanding judicial protocols, established when the High Court consisted entirely of men, proved incapable of accommodating a female justice.

Speaking to Lawyers Weekly, Attorney-General Michelle Rowland said Gaudron’s achievements transformed both women’s expectations of themselves and the profession’s expectations of women.

“Mary Gaudron helped change what women in the law could expect of themselves, and what the profession could expect of women,” A-G Rowland said.

“Her advocacy in matters such as the Equal Pay Case, and later her work on the High Court, demonstrated that women are not merely capable of being participants in the profession, but leaders willing and able to shape it.”

For Justine Anderson, president of the Women Lawyers Association of NSW, Gaudron’s visibility was itself an important part of her contribution.

“Her career demonstrated to women who had the desire to enter the legal profession that it could be done,” Anderson said.

Yet Gaudron’s success was not hers alone to achieve.

Anderson points to the late Janet Coombs, a pioneering barrister who opened her chambers to Gaudron when women were being turned away from other floors because of their gender. A biographical entry on Gaudron in The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia also records that Gaudron initially shared a room with Coombs after encountering hostility when seeking chambers.

Their example illustrates a less frequently discussed aspect of Gaudron’s generation: while individual women were breaking barriers, others were creating the networks and practical opportunities that helped make those breakthroughs possible.

Gaudron herself would go on to mentor other lawyers and advocate for changes extending beyond her own career.

Sandra Karabidian, convenor of the Women Barristers’ Association, said that commitment is central to understanding her contribution.

“The Honourable Mary Gaudron KC’s legacy isn’t limited to the remarkable achievement of becoming the first woman appointed to the High Court,” Karabidian said.

“For women entering the legal profession today, her most enduring contribution is that she refused to let the profession treat firsts for women as a substitute for real systemic change.”

The question she asked in 1997

When Gaudron addressed Australian Women Lawyers in 1997, the profession had already spent decades anticipating that women’s representation would improve with time. She was unconvinced that waiting was an adequate response.

Her speech pointed to the continued underrepresentation of women in senior partnerships, among leading advocates and in the judiciary, despite the removal of formal barriers and the increasing number of female law graduates.

She also supplied a striking measure of women’s visibility in the High Court.

Between July 1996 and June 1997, 73 matters came before the full court, with women presenting arguments on just two occasions.

Gaudron calculated that women accounted for 1.4 per cent of advocates in those matters, based on the conservative assumption that each case involved two parties.

The figures belonged to a different era, but the distinction she drew between access and advancement remains central to the contemporary debate.

Gaudron’s argument also went further than professional representation.

In the 1997 address, Gaudron challenged assumptions embedded in the law and its administration, including those that created injustice by treating irrelevant differences as significant or failing to recognise genuinely different circumstances.

A-G Rowland also pointed to Gaudron’s argument that diversity in the profession and judiciary matters to the administration of justice.

“Central to our justice system is ensuring there is sufficient diversity in the legal profession, including in the judiciary,” A-G Rowland said.

For Gaudron, the challenge was not simply to ensure that women could occupy positions previously reserved for men. It was also to examine whether the profession’s structures, expectations, and practices were themselves producing unjust outcomes.

Karabidian said Gaudron consistently pressed that point.

“She challenged both institutions and the legal professionals working within them to embrace change, not merely to acknowledge its necessity,” Karabidian said.

That distinction gives her 1997 address particular force today.

Progress and a narrowing path to the top

The profession Gaudron entered is not the profession women encounter in 2026.

Women now constitute a majority of Australian solicitors. Their presence across the judiciary has expanded, and in 2022, the High Court had a female majority for the first time.

The milestones have continued. Earlier this year, Dr Ruth Higgins SC became Australia’s first female Commonwealth Solicitor-General, another historic appointment following Gaudron’s own tenure as NSW Solicitor-General.

Law Council of Australia president Tania Wolff said these advances reflect decades of advocacy, including work to improve access to flexible arrangements, paid parental leave and equitable briefing, as well as efforts to address the gender pay gap and sexual harassment.

“The profession has come a long way in the decades since Ms Gaudron began breaking down barriers, in no small part thanks to the efforts of trailblazers like her,” Wolff said.

“But there is still work to do to break down barriers, particularly at the Bar and in leadership positions.”

The distinction is borne out by the International Bar Association’s (IBA) Australian Raising the Bar: Women in Law report, released in January.

Among organisations responding to the study, women accounted for 58 per cent of lawyers but 45 per cent of senior lawyers.

Within participating law firms, women comprised 59 per cent of lawyers and 42 per cent of senior lawyers.

These figures describe the organisations surveyed rather than every Australian legal workplace. Nevertheless, they illustrate the difference between women’s overall participation and their representation in leadership.

The Bar presents a particularly pronounced disparity.

According to the Law Council’s summary of the IBA findings, women accounted for 23 per cent of barristers and 14 per cent of senior counsel at participating barristers’ chambers.

The figures do not negate the progress made since Gaudron’s early career. They demonstrate why the number of women entering the profession cannot, by itself, establish whether opportunities are equitable throughout a career.

As Wolff put it: “For women lawyers, the challenge is no longer entry to the profession – it is progression, retention, and leadership.”

The barriers that numbers can’t explain

The question of why women’s representation narrows at senior levels is more difficult to answer than identifying the disparity itself.

Anderson said some of the barriers facing women today arise not through explicit exclusion, but through decisions about the work they receive and the opportunities available to them.

At the Bar, she pointed to inequities in the types of briefs offered to women, including their complexity and value. Obtaining comprehensive data about those patterns, she said, remains difficult.

Within law firms, the Women Lawyers Association of NSW has received anecdotal reports that women with caring responsibilities are allocated less complex matters because of assumptions about their availability.

Anderson said similar problems can arise when lawyers working remotely are overlooked for new files because they are not physically visible in the workplace.

The consequences can compound over time. Access to substantial work helps practitioners build experience, meet performance expectations and establish the professional reputation needed for advancement.

When those opportunities are unevenly distributed, the effects can extend to remuneration, promotion and, for barristers, the development of a practice capable of supporting an eventual application for silk.

These accounts are concerns reported to the association, rather than findings establishing how frequently such practices occur across the profession. They nevertheless identify an important area for scrutiny: the everyday decisions that determine who receives career-building opportunities.

Anderson also pointed to what she calls the “motherhood tax”, including the effects of parental leave on bonuses and promotion cycles, and workplace cultures that do not adequately support secondary carers.

She said some firms are reviewing their policies to ensure lawyers do not miss promotion opportunities simply because they have taken maternity leave.

Meanwhile, flexible work can enable practitioners to balance professional and caring responsibilities, but Anderson argued that its value is undermined when visibility and long hours are treated as proxies for performance.

The challenge is therefore not confined to whether a workplace formally offers flexibility or parental leave. It extends to whether using those arrangements changes how a lawyer’s commitment, capability, or prospects are assessed.

The same distinction applies to professional networks.

Anderson said the Women Lawyers Association of NSW historically provided a space for women to exchange ideas and refer work when they were excluded from clubs and other established networks.

It continues to support networking and informal mentoring, recognising their role in developing relationships and opening career opportunities.

The barriers Gaudron confronted may have been more overt, but the question of who has access to influential relationships and significant work has not disappeared.

From recognition to reform

While the barriers to women’s progression remain significant, efforts to address them have begun to yield measurable results, particularly in the distribution of work at the Bar.

In April, the Law Council announced that both targets under its Equitable Briefing Policy had been met for the first time.

For the 2024–25 reporting period, women barristers received 32 per cent of briefs and 31 per cent of the total value of brief fees reported by participating barristers and briefing entities.

Both figures exceeded the policy’s 30 per cent targets.

It was a significant milestone, particularly given that the target for the value of briefs had previously remained out of reach.

Yet the Law Council also expressed concern about declining reporting rates, highlighting the difficulty of assessing progress when participation in data collection is inconsistent.

The results provide evidence of improvement among those reporting, but do not establish that women receive equitable access to work across the entire Bar.

Anderson argued that the distribution of briefs must be examined beyond their number and overall value, including the complexity of matters and the opportunities they provide for career development.

The distinction matters because not all briefs offer the same professional benefits.

A substantial or high-profile matter can provide opportunities to develop expertise, establish relationships with instructing solicitors and demonstrate the advocacy experience relevant to future senior counsel appointments.

Anderson’s concerns suggest that assessing equitable briefing requires attention not only to how much work women receive, but also to the nature of that work and the opportunities it creates.

Understanding the broader experiences of women lawyers is also central to the Law Council’s National Attrition and Re-engagement Study Plus (NARS+).

Conducted by the University of NSW, NARS+ revisits the Law Council’s earlier research into attrition and engagement, examining how the profession has changed over the past decade.

Wolff said the study considers workplace experiences through a broader, intersectional lens, recognising that women lawyers do not encounter the profession in identical ways.

“Regular review is necessary to ensure our measures and initiatives are properly targeted, that they are working effectively, and that they evolve as the profession itself changes,” she said, noting that the findings are intended to inform future strategies addressing retention, equity and leadership pathways.

For Anderson, necessary changes extend across remuneration, access to work, promotion, and workplace culture.

She argued that equity targets can help improve representation, particularly where progress has been slow, but said they must be accompanied by better parental leave and flexible work arrangements, along with a commitment from senior leaders to address structural barriers.

There is no single intervention capable of resolving every disparity.

The issues identified by the interviewees span different parts of the profession and different stages of a lawyer’s career.

But they share a common concern: equality cannot be measured solely by whether women are permitted to compete for opportunities.

The profession must also examine how those opportunities are distributed, how success is assessed, and whether its working practices allow talented lawyers to sustain their careers.

For Karabidian, this is precisely the kind of challenge Gaudron was prepared to put to the profession.

“She lent support and legitimacy to issues that might well have been dismissed as matters to be resolved in ‘the fullness of time’,” Karabidian said, adding that Gaudron’s advocacy encouraged those who could envisage a different profession and challenged those within its institutions to help create it.

Beyond the first

Following Gaudron’s death, the extraordinary succession of firsts that marked her career deserves to be celebrated. Each was a landmark achievement, challenging entrenched expectations and expanding what generations of women could imagine for themselves.

But Gaudron’s legacy cannot be measured by those milestones alone. Having reached the highest levels of the profession, she continued to question whether the opportunities she had fought for were becoming genuinely accessible to those who followed.

Nearly three decades after her 1997 address, the profession has changed considerably. Women have entered its doors in numbers that Gaudron’s generation could scarcely have imagined, yet the challenge she identified – translating access into meaningful equality – remains.

Wolff hopes women’s presence in the profession’s highest positions will eventually be “simply the norm, not the exception”.

A-G Rowland expressed a similar ambition.

“Our task now is to continue advocating for women, to encourage the next generation to be as fearless as Mary Gaudron and to continue shaping our profession,” she said.

“It is also to make sure that leadership by women is no longer remarkable. It should be ordinary. It should be judged on talent, judgement and contribution. That would be a fitting continuation of the work Gaudron began.”

Gaudron’s firsts helped change the Australian legal profession. Her enduring challenge is to ensure that the doors she opened lead to opportunities that are no longer exceptional.