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Vance Center Celebrates Women’s Month in South Africa with Dialogue on Gender Equity
On August 29, the Vance Center, in collaboration with the Legal Practice Council (LPC) and nonprofit Basadi Ba Molao, hosted a dialogue to commemorate Women's Month in South Africa.
Panelists Anette Cook, Annabelle Thomas, and Kathleen Dlepu, and moderator Advocate Ntibidi Rampete at the Women’s Month event in Pretoria, August 29, 2024. Photo credit: Legal Practice Council
The dialogue was the first of a four-part series set up with the Legal Practice Council, a national statutory body that regulates and exercises jurisdiction over the country’s legal practitioners and candidate legal practitioners. The series aims to evaluate and build on the findings of the Vance Center’s survey of barriers and challenges impacting women of color in the law, published in March, and to analyze opportunities to address these barriers and support racial equity in South Africa’s legal profession. The series will run for a year, concluding at the end of Women’s Month (August) 2025, with a set of recommendations for positive transformation in the legal profession.
The hybrid event, hosted at the Goddess Café in Pretoria, drew more than 140 participants. Vance Center Africa Program Director Adaobi Egboka opened the discussion by welcoming attendees and presenting the findings of the March 2024 survey, identifying some of the most notable barriers and challenges for South African women of color in the law.
Judge Margaret Victor of the Constitutional Court followed with a keynote recounting her career path, beginning with her childhood during apartheid in the Eastern Cape province and how it shaped her understanding of the intersection of race and gender, then tracing her journey from social work to becoming a legal practitioner, which inspired her to advocate for women’s advancement and transformation in the field and to focus on public interest litigation matters. She described breaking barriers and confronting gender stereotypes when she started working at the Johannesburg Bar; as the first female lawyer elected to the Johannesburg Bar Council, she was put in charge of managing the council’s Tea and Social Committee.
Her speech also touched on the concept of intersectionality, coined by the scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, and the future path of women lawyers, considering the distinct types of discrimination and challenges that women face in the field. Judge Victor encouraged women to get into emerging areas of law, like gender in AI, and to fight for gender equity by helping young female legal practitioners rise to leadership positions.
Keynote speaker Judge Margaret Victor (left) at the Women’s Month event in Pretoria, August 29, 2024. Photo credit: LPC
Judge Victor’s speech was followed by a panel discussion delving into some of the issues identified in the Vance Center’s survey. Advocate Ntibidi Rampete moderated a conversation between panelists Wangui Kaniaru, Partner at ALN Kenya; Annabelle Thomas, General Counsel at L’Oréal; Kathleen Dlepu, Director at Molefe Dlepu; and Anette Cook, Senior Manager in the Office of the LPC Executive Officer.
The panelists discussed unequal pay, work allocation, briefing patterns, and career trajectories for women in the legal profession. Dlepu shared a personal perspective on the struggles she faced as a Black woman starting her own law firm and how she has navigated her practice for more than 35 years. She suggested that the full implementation of the Legal Sector Code, which aims to address inequities resulting from the systematic exclusion of Black people, would address many current issues for women in the profession.
Thomas provided context from a corporate point of view for women’s empowerment in corporations. She stated that women breaking the glass ceiling should no longer be cause for celebration on its own, but rather should be the norm. She encouraged organizations and companies to fully implement flexible work hours, which enable individuals to do their best work, and to empower their internal ethics officers to handle ethics issues with a gender component, to ensure greater accountability and transparency for women.
Panelist Kathleen Dlepu and attendees chatting during the Women’s Month event. Photo credit: LPC
Kaniaru explained existing policies and practices in Kenya and highlighted ways that law firms have worked to support women in advancing their careers, including through mentorship and other intentionally structured programs. She alluded to gradual growth in women’s representation but observed that most of the challenges identified in the survey are similar to those still faced by women legal practitioners in Kenya. She advised that more deliberate investment in conscious programming and concrete actions to support women will result in greater representation of women across all leadership positions.
The LPC’s Cook answered questions about the regulator’s efforts to support women in South Africa’s legal profession. She emphasized that the LPC has many policies on this topic and is working to support women through its transformation committee, but acknowledged there is more to be done for young legal practitioners and small or newly established law firms that may be struggling with practical hurdles like paying enrollment fees and getting more established in the industry. She noted that the LPC has the power to make changes in the legal profession, and that partnerships and dialogues like this one help create opportunities for the organization to learn more about the problems and address some of these persistent barriers for women.
See more photos from the event below
