Promotions boost gender diversity: More women get partner roles now
maternity leave. That did not come in the way of her promotion and in October, Balasubramanian was promoted as partner of TMT (technology, media, and telecommunications) practice purely based on her merit and performance.
In a trend catching up fast, India's top law firms are playing fair in gender diversity and promoting an increasing number of high-potential women lawyers to partner level and are going extra mile to retain them, industry insiders said.
Women accounted for 40% of all promotions across corporate law firms in the country in 2023, up from 33% during pre-Covid times, data from specialist legal search firm Vahura show. «The promotions were across practice areas such as general corporate, disputes practices, capital markets, real estate, tax and intellectual property rights,» said Sneha Oommen, managing associate-private practice and funds group at Vahura.
Boutique law firm Wadhwa Law Offices, for example, promoted Rachita Nadig as their first female corporate law partner last year, according to Vahura, while Komal Dani became the first female partner in tax practice at Trilegal.
Between 22% and 27% of partners at top corporate law firms in India are women, according to Vahura. This would translate to 4,500-5,000 women partners. In the past three years, 42-45% of newly appointed partners have been women lawyers, it said.
The trend is likely to continue. Trilegal, for example, aims to improve gender diversity ratio at the partner level to 40% from the current 30% in the next 2-3 years, its partner Nishant Parikh said.
«The career progression of a woman professional cannot get impacted by key life stages and, as an organisation, we are
