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Work-Family Balance for Women Lawyers Today: A Reality or Still a Dream?

  • Chapter
Handbook on Well-Being of Working Women

Part of the book series: International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life ((IHQL))

Abstract

Applying a theoretical approach centered on the professional ethos, we examine the possibilities for men and women lawyers mainly in Quebec to balance their profession with a family life and to have a good quality of life or well-being. The lawyer profession is governed by a set of formal rules alongside informal expectations and professional ethics. Many lawyers come to question the long hours required by this ethic when they begin to plan for children. However, the standards imposed by the professional culture and ethics are nevertheless well anchored in the profession. Professional advancement is difficult for women; this can mean either scaling back or postponing their professional engagement or postponing having children. Even when they postpone births, it is difficult for these women to commit sufficiently, and sufficiently soon, to access the career status of associate at a large firm.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In Quebec, the average age at the birth of their first child is lower for women (28.0 years) than for men. Due to the small size of our group of interviewees, we cannot draw definitive conclusions on the subject; however, we did observe a trend among women lawyers to postpone the moment of the arrival of their first child up to the average age of 30.4 years. (The median age is 30 years).

  2. 2.

    This refers to both planned and unplanned pregnancies.

  3. 3.

    On the effects of taking parental leaves on the possibilities of professional advancement see Tremblay (2010, 2013) and Tremblay and Genin (2011).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Management School, University of Québec/Téluq, Quebec, Canada

    Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay

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  1. Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay
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Correspondence to Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management College of Business Administration, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa, USA

    Mary L. Connerley

  2. Department of Management and Marketing School of Management, Rhode Island College, Providence, Rhode Island, USA

    Jiyun Wu

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Tremblay, DG. (2016). Work-Family Balance for Women Lawyers Today: A Reality or Still a Dream?. In: Connerley, M., Wu, J. (eds) Handbook on Well-Being of Working Women. International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9897-6_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9897-6_20

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-017-9896-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-017-9897-6

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