International Women’s Day: Reject the Norm, Say IP Leaders

For International Women’s Day 2022, Managing Intellectual Property highlighted the issues of gender bias that persists among women in the workplace. One bias that persists in the workplace is that businesses assume that women who wish to have children do not wish to elevate to senior roles in their careers, which is not an assumption placed on men who have children. Finnegan partner Maeve O’Flynn explained that she experienced the bias first-hand in a former role when she had her first child.

Maeve said, “There are still assumptions about the aspirations of women once they become parents that are not made about men when they become parents.” She added, “We often place working mothers on a mum track, assuming that they just want a quiet life, but we are unlikely to do this for working fathers. Breaking this gender bias is difficult, particularly as it often comes from a benevolent perspective of trying to help.”

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