Professionalism in Everyday Work: Women Lawyers’ Strategies to Exercise Control over Their Work in Finland, French Canada, and Poland

Abstract

This chapter focuses on professional autonomy, which has been a touchstone of professions and professional work. Here, professional autonomy is examined from a gender perspective, focusing on women lawyers’ strategies to cope with their disadvantaged positions and discriminatory professional environments across three civil law countries. The examination draws on two ideas of professionalism: as a “third logic” (Freidson, Professionalism: The third logic. University of Chicago Press, 2001) and as “organisational” (Evetts, Curr Soc. 54(1):133–143, 2006; Curr Soc. 59(4), 406–422, 2011). The analyses are based on interview data collected from 42 women lawyers from Finland, French Canada, and Poland. The results show that women lawyers are capable of acting resourcefully to exercise control over their work and the professional market. The results demonstrate five strategies that these women used: (1) highlighting the status of the profession, to additional educational qualifications and to the title of law firm partner, (2) highlighting altruistic aspects of legal work, (3) the “typing” of clients and cases, (4) personalising relationships with clients, and (5) establishing joint law offices with friends and sharing office space. This chapter contributes to the “between” dimension of professionalism as it demonstrates differences in the strategies women lawyers use to strengthen their professional autonomy across professional systems and structures.