Against most male-dominated accounts of professional work, elite law firms in India pose a puzzling exception: women make up about half of these firms, even at senior levels of partnership. Using in-depth interviews with over 130 professionals in India’s elite litigation, transactional law and consulting firms, this research suggests that elite law firms—as new, local organizations—aggressively differentiate themselves from their more traditional peers to establish organizational legitimacy. At the same time, as institutions trying to mimic global firms without actual scripts for doing so, these firms engage in a form of “speculative isomorphism” through which they signal meritocracy and modernity to their global audience. Because equal gender representation is one such mechanism, the result is environments where certain kinds of women are uniquely advantaged.

中文翻译：

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就像全球公司：印度精英职业中意外的性别平等和投机同构

与大多数男性主导的专业工作说法相反，印度的精英律师事务所提出了一个令人费解的例外：女性占这些事务所的大约一半，即使是高级合伙人也是如此。本研究对印度精英诉讼、交易法和咨询公司的 130 多名专业人士进行了深入访谈，结果表明，精英律师事务所——作为新的本地组织——积极地将自己与更传统的同行区分开来，以建立组织合法性。与此同时，由于机构试图在没有实际脚本的情况下模仿全球公司，这些公司参与了一种“投机同构”的形式，通过这种形式，他们向全球观众发出了精英主义和现代性的信号。因为平等的性别代表就是这样一种机制，