Biography
Lwando Xaso, lawyer, writer and speaker and founder of established to explore how we can build a society that is reflective of our constitutional commitments and aspirations . She is the author of “Made in South Africa; A Black Woman’s Stories of Rage, Resistance and Progress” published in 2020. Like so many of her generation, she came of age alongside the beginnings and growth of South Africa’s constitutional democracy. Her journey into adulthood was a radically different one from that of earlier generations, marked by hope that changing perceptions would usher in a new and free society, but as we now know the challenges have been immense. Lwando’s writing reflects her unflinching resolve to live according to the precepts of our groundbreaking Constitution and offers a challenge to all South Africans to believe in and achieve ‘the improbable’.
The attrition rate of women at law firms seems to confirm the stereotype that we are not smart enough to make it but to place the problem solely on our doorstep is to absolve firms with biased institutional structures which alienate women. For as long as law firms remain overwhelmingly White and male – especially at the decision-making level, they will re-enforce the message that we do not belong.
I firmly believe that open and honest discussions on institutional cultures and how some of us experience those cultures, is a good place to start but a lousy place to finish. What is needed is for people to choose differently. What is needed is for people not to make their choices out of fear, but in alignment with the values that these institutions purportedly define themselves by.