Vice-President in 2001
Vivienne Crawshaw KC is a barrister specialising family law.
Vivienne was first involved with AWLA as a student representative in 1987. Later, Vivienne joined the committee and went on to be the vice president.
Vivienne remembers her time on the committee as an amazing experience, with AWLA offering a collegial environment for women in the legal profession. A memorable event was the successful launch of the mentoring programme, this provided an alternative to the informal mentoring systems available that were predominately for male lawyers.
While Vivienne was on the committee, AWLA advocated for the tax deductibility of childcare as a workplace expense, with AWLA filing submissions on the issue. In addition, AWLA raised concerns about social commentary regarding rape myths and inappropriate comments made by Justice Morris during sexual offence cases. AWLA issued a press statement on the issue condemning the comments.
Although progress has been made, Vivienne reflects that we still have a long way to go. We are seeing greater numbers of women within the profession, however the legal profession continues to lack diversity. Systemic inequality still prevails, with Vivienne observing that clients still sometimes wanting to instruct male lawyers.
Vivienne successfully balanced job sharing and working part time while having children, but recalls few women opting to juggle work and children this way. There was a very binary ‘fax machine in the delivery suite or leave the law entirely’ mentality. Vivienne notes that the issues lawyers face when combining motherhood with their careers remains a significant issue for women in the legal profession today.