Staying on the ball

Published on Monday 7 May 2007 01:39

TO JOURNALISTS at least, Amanda Jones's CV invites some questions that are perhaps as predictable as they are inevitable. For example, has her decision to specialise in discrimination law stemmed from some bitter personal experience of sexism at work? Did she have to claw her way up the ladder, fighting tooth-and-perfectly-manicured-nail to secure a partnership with one of Scotland's leading firms?

Doubtless Jones is becoming used to such questions but, no, she doesn't believe gender has been a barrier in her career - and the evidence would certainly support such a view.

After qualifying in 1997, Jones had achieved partnership with niche employment firm Mackay Simon before she even joined Maclay Murray & Spens as a partner in 2001. She developed a sideline in sports law and recently became the first woman to be admitted to the board of Hibernian FC.

"Over the years, I have done a few things for managers who were sacked and players who were sacked... football can keep lawyers quite busy," she laughs. "It was just something that was good fun."

She's not keen to make a big deal about being a female non-executive director at Easter Road, and says the day no-one bothers to comment on issues of gender, race, sexuality or disability will be the day true equality has arrived. It will be so normal for people who are black, gay, female or have disabilities to achieve in life that no-one will bat an eyelid. "Then you'll know you've got somewhere," she says with a smile.

Meanwhile, however, the fact Jones has achieved success in two traditionally male-dominated worlds of law and football remains noteworthy. Yet she of all people knows only too well the insidious and corrosive nature of discrimination.

Her track record in this sub-specialty of employment law has led to her being accredited as one of the Law Society's first two discrimination specialists. As she was already a specialist in employment law, this recognition of her expertise in discrimination cases might seem like a sign of the times. With gender, race, religion, disability, sexuality and, most recently, age all now grounds for potential claims, are more people than ever queuing up to take employers to a tribunal?

Jones says the accreditation of specialists in discrimination is less a reflection of increased demand from clients, and more a recognition of the increased complexity of this area of the law: "It is now a specialism within a specialism. Being a specialist in employment law is not in itself enough. I have a colleague who would specialise in TUPE and business transfer, which I might do some work around, but I would never say I was a specialist in it. So, if there was a difficult case, I would refer it to her. Equally, if there was an equal-pay or sex-discrimination case, she wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. It is so complicated."

Most of her workload relates to sex discrimination, equal pay and, increasingly, disability discrimination. But she predicts age-related claims will be a big issue once employees start to recognise their rights under the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006, which came into force in October.

"Although there has been a lot of publicity, people don't necessarily realise it affects them," she says. "For example, with the Disability Discrimination Act, I still have clients who I tell might be protected under the act, but they say, 'I'm not disabled.' They fit the definition in the Act, but people wouldn't necessarily see themselves as disabled and wouldn't necessarily want that."

This is one reason Jones believes more people don't pursue claims against employers - many don't want to believe they are being singled out for something they can't change about themselves.

"It is quite a lot for people to say to themselves that they are being treated in a certain way because of something they can't do anything about, for example if it's their gender or their sexual orientation."

Jones believes most employers genuinely don't believe they have been discriminating against their staff. "It can be disappointing," she says. "The other thing is that, very often, discrimination can be subconscious. I think it does still happen that people say, 'I am not going to give you a job,' or, 'I am not going to promote you or give you a pay rise because you are black/gay/a woman/disabled.' But it's more about society. People don't that often deliberately discriminate, and I don't know how much legislation can change attitudes.

"Education is probably a much stronger tool. I don't know quite how far that would take us on its own. I think you do need the carrot-and-stick approach."

In sex discrimination cases, she believes, the biggest single problem for women is access to childcare, and the perception that women should bear the majority of responsibility for looking after children. Jones freely admits she couldn't do her job without support from her husband, who looks after their two young children full-time. "I have two wee boys but I am in the very lucky position that my husband will stay home and look after them," she says. "The sort of job I do, the hours I work, would be very difficult, if not impossible, to do without either a full-time nanny or a partner who took the main responsibility for childcare."

She adds: "It's made for some interesting conversations. People say, 'And what does your husband do?' and I say, 'He stays at home and looks after the children.' They ask, 'Oh right, does he work from home?' And I say, 'No, he stays home and looks after the children. He doesn't have time.'"

Jones is also aware other working women, even in the legal profession where ignorance of the law is definitely no excuse for employers, are not quite so fortunate. In 2005, research commissioned by the Law Society and the Equal Opportunities Commission highlighted stark differences in pay, of up to 42 per cent between male and female lawyers. She believes this cannot be wholly explained by the fact women choose to focus more time on family life.

"It is a contributing factor, but having looked at the information, I don't think it could be said that it's the only factor," she says. "The figures are too wide apart. When you think that women are now entitled to take a year's maternity leave, but when they were entitled to take six months, very few lawyers would even take six months. One of the other interesting statistics was about the number of women and men that reach partnership and the difference in the length of time it takes.

"There is always going to be an element of choice, in that it's difficult being a partner in terms of trying to juggle everything. But it's also a question of, what is the choice? Does it have to be working 24/7 at the expense of having any kind of family life? I hope that that would change now that more men would quite like to see their children occasionally."