Gender Equality at Dentons New Zealand

Gender equality

Dentons Kensington Swan has 36 partners, of which 13 are women, meaning a 36% women-based partnership. This has seen a positive increase over the years: 

• 2022: 39% women in partnership
• 2021:  41% women in partnership
• 2020: 39% women in partnership
• 2019: 35% women in partnership
• 2018: 32% women in partnership
• 2017: 30% women in partnership

Our current gender representation in senior roles is as follows:

The firm’s Partnership Deed mandates that the Board is never made up of representatives from only one gender, currently the ratio is 60% men and 40% women. 

Recent activity

• We submitted our response for the annual NZLS Gender Equality Charter Survey 2023. Established in 2018, the Charter is aimed at improving the retention and advancement of women lawyers and contains a set of gender equality commitments for legal workplace signatories to implement. The Charter requires signatories to lead from the top, make a plan and take action on the commitments, and measure progress.
• With a view to supporting women to succeed in the firm, we are involved in Dentons’ Global Women’s Sponsorship Programme - a twelve-month program focusing on driving career opportunities and advancement within Dentons as a global organisation. The programme pairs 15 women who are already leaders in their own fields with 15 senior Dentons sponsors. A woman from New Zealand was a member of the pilot programme and we have identified another woman to participate in 2023.
• The Gender group (one of our Social Impact Groups) recently engaged an external consultant (Talbot Mills) to undertake a qualitative research project driven by the experiences our women team members. The results of the project provided us with action points aimed at continuing to improve our support and retention of our women team members, which are helping to inform the initiatives we drive as a firm.

Equal pay

• In New Zealand, our policies include equal pay for all employees with pay based on experience and charge-out rates to clients. Industry pay benchmark surveys are shared with employees, so the process is transparent. The firm also continues to review salaries while an employee is on parental leave.
• To encourage flexible working, partner income is based on contribution, not hours worked. Irrespective of whether a partner works full or part-time, he or she will still be paid based on relative contribution.

Parental leave policy review

• We continue to ensure our parental leave policy is market leading. Our most recent review was at the end of 2022, with positive changes to the policy backdated to 1 January 2022 to benefit those already on leave.
• We are signatories to the NZLS ‘Gender Equality Charter’ and adopters of the Gender Equitable Engagement and Instruction policy.

Recognition

• In 2020, the online publication ““Human Resources Director” labelled Dentons Kensington Swan as ‘gender leader’ – applauding our adoption of strategies involving mentoring, pay audits, leadership and other courses and programmes
• In 2019 Dentons Kensington Swan was the only New Zealand law firm to be recognised as a finalist in the Diversity Awards NZ for our commitment to creating the policies and culture to allow talented women lawyers to achieve their full potential

Work in this space

• Our Public law team was engaged in 2022 to conduct a ‘law gap’ analysis, to test how best to mandate pay gap reporting. New Zealand is behind other comparable jurisdictions in having no requirement to report pay gaps, and very little information on pay gaps is publicly available. The work included drafting a proposed Bill which the YWCA under its ‘Mind the Gap’ project has presented to Parliament and Ministers. We also facilitated a meeting of major employers and unions to test the workability of the proposed Bill and provide feedback to the Government.