Recently retired Supreme Court judge Ms Justice Marie Baker remembers a different time, when women were up against it trying to gain a foothold in the legal profession.

“I suppose if you go back to when I started in the 1980s, women in my position felt delighted to be there,” says the former barrister and judge, speaking in advance of International Women’s Day on Saturday. .

“It felt like we were lucky, we had managed to work our way into a profession that our mothers would have considered out of bounds. So we possibly didn’t entirely expect that things would be easy or straightforward; not that I am saying they are now.”

Things were certainly different then.

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Census data from 1981 shows about a fifth of judges, barristers and solicitors – some 702 out of 3,557 in all – were women. That was a five-fold increase on a decade earlier.

Just 17 years before that, crowds are said to have packed into a District Court in Dublin Castle to witness the novelty of Ireland’s first woman judge, Eileen Kennedy, in action.

[ Tributes paid as Supreme Court judge Marie Baker retiresOpens in new window ]

In a recent Courts Service podcast about Kennedy, retired probation officer Maura O’Looney spoke of giving evidence in the Circuit Court in the 1970s with a garda’s glove draped across her head because the male judge refused to hear her evidence unless her head was covered.

Baker recalls a mix of experiences dealing with male colleagues. She says the support of other women was crucial as she started out in her career.

“I had a few women solicitors who really, I would say, almost sponsored me. They made it their business to brief women if they could, and that helped. And I think there are still some women who do that, but I think there are fewer,” she says.

Women now make up a little over half the legal profession’s roughly 12,500-strong full-time workforce. The number rises further when part-time solicitors and barristers are included.

There has been progress made on all sorts of fronts and women are especially well represented in particular areas of the law but inequalities persist, says Baker.

She believes the economic crash and Covid contributed to ongoing underrepresentation in the Bar’s more senior cohort and in areas such as commercial litigation.

“I think that when solicitors had a choice whether to brief a woman or a man when the crash happened, they briefed a man. Why? Because I think, going back to basics, their clients – many of their personal ones at least – preferred a man because there was a perception that being a lawyer involved being tough, and that women are not as tough.

[ Legal profession must change workplace culture to improve diversity, report saysOpens in new window ]

“I think there has been progress for women and the equality of numbers in almost all areas has been a factor but that progress has stalled and I would be a little despondent.”

She is, she acknowledges, talking primarily about barristers rather than solicitors, many of whom, she feels, have benefited from an improved culture around the biggest firms.

Many of the gender pay gap figures at those firms serve as a stark reminder, however, that the very top tier, equity partner, is still something of a male preserve.

Barrister Jane McGowan, who is vice-chair of the Irish Women Lawyers Association, believes the gender balance among those coming into the legal profession is very positive – “there is tremendous representation for women” – but, she says, “the number drops off to a staggering degree about years five and seven”.

There are, she acknowledges some supports provided, such as improved mentoring, but huge challenges remain, she says, not least around having and raising a family at what is generally a critical time of a barrister’s career.

“Times have moved on,” she says. “The Bar has changed and the legal system is changing, but perhaps not at the same speed at which society has changed.

“There isn’t really the necessary support there for women who are hitting that crunch time in their lives when familial pressures and financial pressures tend to squeeze them and focus their minds.”

Many of the issues involved, she acknowledges, are common to all self-employed women. She accepts the Law Society and Bar Council cannot successfully address them all but “we do need some more imaginative and productive thinking”.

“We see an awful lot of women being snapped up because of their talents and going into Civil Service roles because the stability of finances, of parenting, sick leave and all the various other benefits that are afforded to them.

[ Women outperform men in getting senior jobs in Civil Service, report findsOpens in new window ]

“For those who stay, there are opportunities for career progression that weren’t there and there are a lot more women judges now but there’s a huge amount of talent being lost before that stage.”

The legal profession is not unique in the way the gender balance has shifted and there are far more dramatic examples.

In 1971 barely a third of pharmacists were women, whereas now the figure is closer to 90 per cent. In accountancy, the census suggests, the figure was less than 3 per cent, while fewer than 1 per cent of vets were women. In 2022, the gender balance was almost exactly even in both professions once those working part-time were taken into account.

In dentistry, similar to medicine, it is close to parity and with about two thirds of recent college entrants and graduates being women the scale is about to be tipped.

Dr Sarah Fitzgibbon, a Cork-based GP and founder of the almost 900-strong Women in Medicine Network, is no more optimistic than her legal counterparts about the benefits that winning a simple numbers game might bring.

As things stand, she says, there was a 38 per cent gender pay gap among Irish doctors in 2016, with women tending to work in areas of medicine that have traditionally been less well paid and not progressing to senior roles, such as clinical director, in the same numbers that men do.

A very substantial difference between the pay men and women receive over the course of their careers persists, she says.

Greater engagement with family responsibilities is still a big part of the issue, she says, citing the work of economist Claudia Goldin whose work on pay inequality won her a Nobel Prize.

Essentially, Fitzgibbon says, the evidence points to women, even in couples with the same career earning power, doing 16 hours more of the domestic work, a reality that influences career decisions that have long-term impacts.

“That domestic labour has to be done. Somebody needs to do it. The children need to be minded, and fed, in an environment where childcare is prohibitively expensive. It can be a very difficult choice but it’s generally the women who do it. That’s basically the fundamentals of it,” she says.

And so the huge demands placed on doctors at various stages of their careers – and in particular specialities – combined with the lack of supports provided, make a gender imbalance inevitable, she says.

“Irish medicine is very traditional and moves slowly,” she says.

“It’s not going to be a beacon for progress on all of this. I think that it does need to be a kind of more societal change.”

She believes women becoming a majority in the profession overall, as they are set to, won’t herald any great shift because wider attitudes will continue to have their career options limited.

“We have women doing fantastic things both at home and internationally, making big differences and serving as great role models for younger women thinking about doing medicine,” says Fitzgibbon.

“But we need to support women at very specific times throughout their careers, certainly when they’re making choices about specialities, when they are making choices about their personal life, which ideally wouldn’t have any relevance to their professional success.”

In other fields, meanwhile, the influx of women is not nearly so profound with, for instance, only about 12 per cent of engineers being women, although this figure represents progress on the three engineers in almost 4,000 recorded 54 years ago.

Professional body Engineers Ireland says it is well aware of the issue.

While the proportion of female students across related courses generally is about twice the 12 per cent working in the industry, the organisation’s Women in Engineering Group was established in 2021 with the goal, in common with its work with schools, of attracting women into the profession.

In some professions, progress takes time.