Career Advancement in Swedish Law Firms. A Study of How Structures, Norms and Legitimacy Affect Women's Opportunities to Become Partners

Sammanfattning

The purpose of the study is to examine how organisational norms, expectations and ideas of legitimacy influence the partnership process in Swedish business law firms and if and then in what way these affect women's opportunities to advance to partnership positions. The study adopts a qualitative approach in which semi-structured interviews were conducted with sixteen participants from different organisational roles, genders and law firms. The interviews focused on how participants describe and experience the partnership process. The findings show that many participants perceived the partnership process as both formal and informal. Business generation and bringing in clients to the firm were described as important aspects of partnership opportunities as well as informal criterias. For example, expectations related to availability and commitment were described as very important and these expectations often made it difficult to combine career advancement with family life. The findings also showed that relationships with existing partners were important for partnership opportunities. It further became clear that the expectations of availability appeared to affect women to a greater extent than men due to societal structures and as the majority of partners in law firms are still men it also indicates a risk of homosocial reproduction in the partnership process. The study therefore concludes that together with societal structures, the findings suggest that these organisational processes could contribute to the reproduction of gendered patterns regarding who is perceived suitable for partnership.