I'm going to make every effort to get through this blog without innuendo. After all, it's not an issue that I focus on much – I've managed to go more than two years as editor of Legal Week without expressing an opinion on the matter. But there's no doubt that gender politics still fascinates (can't say excites) the profession like nothing else. Whenever legalweek.com runs a Career Clinic that even tangentially touches on the issue of women in law, traffic goes through the roof. That goes double if the subject has anything to do with appearance. It was a professional low point when I had to explain to a tabloid journalist that, as a dyed-in-the-wool business reporter, I didn't have any pictures on file of female lawyers in fishnets to illustrate the piece they were working on.

The latest reminder of the strong feelings the gender issues generate comes from our upcoming Big Question poll. Despite being well into the summer slow period, the survey on women in law has already received more than double the average number of responses from partners.

In addition, almost 70 partners have submitted comments to the poll, contributing enough text to cover 10 sides of A4. It's an interesting mix of comments, blending the liberal-minded with a fairly sizeable strain of the reactionary and outraged. Some were offended that our questions assumed that there was a tendency of a fair proportion of women to want to have children and, on the whole, that women take on the lion's share of the child-rearing responsibilities. I have no idea why that is controversial - it's a statement of statistical fact.

For what it's worth, I believe that much of the underlying issue is the UK's working culture, which fetishises long hours. Obviously, this is even more pronounced in the City and the legal profession.

This is then exacerbated by the UK's relatively shabby state contribution to childcare, even though there's a clear economic case for making it easier for parents of young children to keep working.

It is also more pressing for the legal profession because it has two countervailing forces. On one hand, it is one of the most attractive careers for women – we know this as women entering the profession now outnumber men. Yet the profession is poor at retaining women, thanks to the expectations placed on those vying for partnership at the point when thoughts turn to starting a family.

There is a consensus that law firms could do more, though I suspect that will be as much about becoming more family-friendly in general and reaching an accord with clients over flexible working.

There is some hypocrisy from law firms on the latter point. It's true clients haven't been that accommodating with flexi-working at advisers. But law firms played their part in creating this monster. Being available 24/7 was used to stress your premium service levels – and therefore charge a premium – and the billing and utilisation culture has hardly helped matters.

Anyway, those who want to know more should look at our next issue on Thursday (23 July). It may even be worth reprinting some of the stream of partner comments at some point as well.