IWD 2026: How to combat the gender earnings gap

In her inaugural address as Chair of the Bar on 12 January 2026, Kirsty Brimelow KC identified addressing the earnings gaps at the self-employed Bar as one of the priorities for the next 12 months, including through fairer allocation of work and improving billing practices. She has already met with Law Society President Mark Evans, and the Bar Council and the Law Society will collaborate.

The Personal Injuries Bar Association (PIBA) has been working hard to see what it can do as a specialist Bar association to address the earnings gap. The findings presented by Rachel Krys of the Bar Council at a PIBA event in September 2024 dedicated to issues of pay equality in personal injury practice were stark:

• As more women have joined the personal injury Bar, the gender earnings gap has widened.
• In every cohort surveyed, men earn more than women.
• Men make up 72% of barristers at the personal injury Bar, and earn 80% of the gross earnings; women make up 28% and earn 20%.
• Looking at median earnings for those at 0-3 years’ PQE, women earn 17% less than their male counterparts. At 4-10 years’ call the gap is 25%, and at 11-15 years it is 52%.
• Women silks’ gross median earnings are 27% lower than those of their male counterparts.
• Overall, the discrepancy is 17%. Personal injury shared the dubious honour with crime as the area with the largest pay discrepancies at the Bar. (This distinction has since been lost to the commercial and Chancery Bar, but there is no cause for satisfaction.)
• Experience has shown that even where there is earnings transparency in chambers, there is still an earnings disparity. Transparency is not the (only) answer; and resistance to greater earnings transparency does not mean that the gender earnings gap cannot be analysed or remedied.

One of the key findings of the Bar Council’s 2024 report Gross earnings by sex and practice area at the self-employed Bar was that during 2020-23, median earnings at the Bar had increased for both men and women, but women’s earnings increased by less than men’s: the gap was increasing.

The position has still not improved. Far from it. The most recent Bar Council report of November 2025, Gross earnings by sex and practice area at the self-employed Bar, is based on 2024 earnings data:

• Women were earning less than men across all experience levels at the self-employed Bar. Junior women were earning 76%, and women silks 72%, compared with their respective male counterparts.
• Earnings gaps persist across every PQE band and in every area of practice.
• During the previous four years (2021-24) median earnings at the Bar increased for both men and women, but women’s earnings increased by less than men’s: the gap is still increasing.
• In the first three years of practice, women earn on average 83% of what men do. In general civil work, new women practitioners (0-3 years’ PQE) are earning 66% of their male colleagues’ earnings.

PIBA also invited two Weightmans’ partners, Catherine Kearney and Ingrid McGhee, to address the event in September 2024, to talk about what steps solicitors and clients might take to reduce the pay disparity. Taking action to help reduce pay inequality can make a positive difference to the equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) objectives of both solicitors and their clients. Ingrid and Catherine encouraged reflection on the attitudes and briefing practices of clients and solicitors. If insurers and law firms are monitoring the instruction of counsel and have gender data available, it would be interesting to work towards that data being shared and analysed – any confidentiality concerns can surely be overcome. So PIBA is delighted to hear that the Law Society will be working with the Bar Council on this issue.

The Bar Council’s 2025 recommendations for chambers to address and redress the gender earnings imbalance are that chambers ensure they understand the underlying causes of any disparities they find (which presupposes monitoring and analysis) to ensure members get fair access to work; that women be able to charge effectively for the work they do; and that they get the support they need to build and sustain their practice. Support and advice for barristers and chambers is available from the Bar Council’s EDI team (email equality@barcouncil.org.uk).

At the PIBA annual conference in March 2025 Lindsay Scott of 39 Essex Chambers discussed the steps Chambers had taken to investigate and address the issue of pay equality, with invaluable help from the Bar Council’s EDI team.

Information and informed practice reviews are a vital part of the solution, and the solution lies with practice managers, clerks and chambers’ chief executives, individual barristers, and chambers’ management as a whole. William Audland KC explained at our September 2024 event that at 12 King’s Bench Walk the gender earnings gap was on the management board agenda for every meeting. We are also acutely aware that the gender earnings gap is just one part of the diversity and inclusion problem. At the PIBA annual conference in March 2025, Laurie-Anne Power KC reminded the audience that she is only the seventh Black woman silk. There can be no doubt that race and gender have a combined effect on earnings. The key findings of the Bar Standards Board’s June 2025 research report Income at the Bar – by Gender and Ethnicity are that:

• Female barristers and barristers from minority ethnic backgrounds are likely to earn less than white and male barristers, and are the lowest earning groups.
• Female barristers from minority ethnic backgrounds are the lowest earning group.
• When barristers are grouped by their main area of practice and seniority, female barristers from minority ethnic backgrounds earn less on average than equivalent male and white barristers. This suggests that differences in income by gender and ethnicity cannot be explained solely by practice area or experience.

What matters now is what action we take, and that it is taken at the beginning of a barrister’s career.

Solutions include:

1. Collecting and analysing data, and publishing it in chambers. This does not necessitate complete earnings transparency in chambers, and a desire to avoid earnings transparency is not a reason not to collect and analyse the data.
2. Asking how each chambers is collecting data and analysing it, and if there is a structured plan to address the gender earnings gap.
3. Training on billing practices for barristers and clerks, and regular conversations about them. PIBA plans to include training on billing for juniors at its March 2026 conference.
4. Cohort analysis within chambers, above and beyond practice review meetings. This allows individuals to see how they rank in comparison to their peers, in a confidential way.
5. Ensuring that more junior barristers are clerked by experienced clerks, who are alive to issues feeding the gender earnings gap.
6. Regular practice review meetings from the start of practice, to try to prevent the earnings gap opening. Reviewing performance, setting goals, and speaking frankly about fees and work distribution. These should be in conjunction with regular informal conversations, at least fortnightly, to discuss time recording, billing and earnings.
7. Mentoring, from the start, including on the nuts and bolts of time recording and billing.
8. Proactive clerking from the start: including billing reviews even in the second six months of pupillage. Chambers must not wait for women barristers to ask for higher fees or more complex cases; clerks should encourage them to move upwards and step into leadership roles. When looking at panel membership, clerks should look at the make-up of that panel and seek to ensure equal representation. If women are not being added to panels by the client/insurer, then clerks can press for inclusion. Clerks can help to ensure that women and men are encouraged equally to give talks and seminars and write for newsletters, and to organise and attend business development and training events. Ensure that those events are organised with a watchful eye on those with parenting and other caring responsibilities – don’t have everything at 4.30pm, but make sure there is a spread of times.
9. Involving instructing solicitors, clients and insurers in the solution. Make them aware of the earnings gap so that they can address it.
10. Assisting active interventions into led work.
11. Recognising unconscious bias and challenging it. Think hard about what future stars at the Bar might look like, and what successful practitioners at specialist Bars might look like.
12. Putting pay equality onto the management board agenda. Monitor pay equality and what is being done to tackle the gap and what effect those steps are having.
13. Seeking the help of the Bar Council with addressing earnings inequality.

What specialist Bar associations can do

PIBA is committed to addressing pay inequality in all its forms. It is on the agenda at each executive meeting, and at each EDI sub-committee meeting. We have a pay inequality session at each annual conference, and seek to ensure that it provides practical advice. We will continue to offer information and training, with our most recent event on 29 January in Leeds (and remotely). We want to ensure we offer information and training which is accessible to those in smaller chambers and to those practitioners for whom personal injury or clinical negligence is not their sole area of work. We are working on a charter for chambers, setting out concrete aims – the most important of which is to see pay inequality decrease in a measurable way over the next five years.

Addressing the gender earnings gap may not necessarily mean women earning more than they do now. It means fairness. If a female barrister finds that they are earning less at, say, five years’ call than a male contemporary but has chosen, on careful discussion of the areas of work open to them and the likely earnings from those areas, to work fewer hours, or to work in less well remunerated areas, that is their right. But it must be a conscious and informed choice. It should not come from a position of ignorance about the data, or a lack of confidence.

Most crucial is a focus on the first three years of practice, to prevent pay inequality setting in from the outset: train pupillage supervisors to train pupils in time recording and billing; train pupils and new tenants to think about pay equality from the start; and train clerks to think about pay equality from the start of barristers’ practice.

Plainly pay is not the only issue – see the recent Financial Times analysis (1 January 2026) ‘Number of women barristers in UK Supreme Court cases fails to increase in 17 years’, which found that the number of women barristers appearing in the UK Supreme Court has not changed for 17 years – but it is vital and SBAs can help address it. 

Bar Council resources, training and support

Practice Review Guide for Barristers and Clerks, Bar Council Ethics and Practice Hub, June 2023

Toolkit: Calculating work distribution in chambers, Bar Council Ethics and Practice Hub, October 2023

Training: Work distribution and monitoring, 24 March 2026, 5 to 7pm, Online  Increase your understanding of how to monitor the distribution of work within your chambers and find out how to generate data to inform practice management. £265+VAT; Bar Representation Fee member price: £215+VAT). Book your place. In-chambers training: The Bar Council also offers this training in-chambers, on all the Circuits – email trainingandevents@barcouncil.org.uk for information on dates and pricing.

Seeking the help of the Bar Council with addressing earnings inequality: email the Bar Council’s EDI team at equality@barcouncil.org.uk