Law firms around the world are more prone than ever to promote women to the rank of partner — and are finding themselves under pressure to make the business of law a lot more family-friendly as they do. Pressure to be constantly available to clients is still blurs the lines of office and personal life, Megan Gray, a corporate lawyer tells the Financial Times in the widely read feature Law firms under pressure to make more women partners.

Making partner is a slog: You need more than 2k annual billable hours under your belt to make partner at some firms, the FT suggests — with plenty of those hours spent in the office.

IN OMM EL DONIA- Out of 170 partners at Egyptian law firms ranked on the IFLR 1000, an industry listing, 41 are female – which amounts to 24%. That’s well behind UK, where women make up 35% of partners in law firms. The situation isn’t likely to be much better across the pond: Only 19% of equity partners at North American law offices surveyed by McKinsey were partner, and women are 29% less likely than men to make it to the first rank of partnership. (Those McKinsey figures admittedly date to 2017, but are not likely to have changed radically.)

Egypt is no different to the west:The ability for women to reach the path of partner, or any role of leadership in any business, is inextricably bound to the support she receives from her workplace, her family unit, and her community, says Natasha Shirazi, legal director at Orascom Construction. And there’s too often an insidious assumption that if you’re successful at work, you are likely falling behind at home (or vice versa), she adds. Women in leadership positions in law get there, often, because their communities and backgrounds allow them to do so and are more accepting of women succeeding.

What can you do if you want to have access to the full 100% of your addressable workforce? It starts with believing in your female leaders — and with creating a system that offers them the support and flexibility they need to not have to make the choice between work and family. Shirazi says Orascom, for example, has systems and supports in place that ensure her success as a leader — without demanding to make horrible sacrifices in her personal life.

The payoff from an investment in women leaders is clear: Freshfields — a global firm well known to Egyptian lawyers — has seen women make up more than half of new partners in recent classes. That’s nearly doubled the number of women partners to 27%, and the firm is aiming to have women account for 40% of all partners by 2030.

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