{"id":26903,"date":"2023-03-10T08:30:58","date_gmt":"2023-03-10T08:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/?p=26903"},"modified":"2023-03-08T17:03:39","modified_gmt":"2023-03-08T17:03:39","slug":"why-we-need-more-women-judges-in-the-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/2023\/03\/10\/why-we-need-more-women-judges-in-the-uk\/","title":{"rendered":"Why we need more women judges in the UK"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Law-making was an entirely male activity in the UK until just over a century ago and has been dominated by men ever since.\u00a0 Barred from both standing and voting for Parliament, and also from becoming lawyers, women had to campaign vigorously for decades before they were grudgingly admitted, only to face discrimination, marginalisation and outright misogyny in these bastions of male power \u2013 features which, as the press reveals, we still see today.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_27052\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-27052\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-27052 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/72\/2023\/02\/The-Old-Bailey-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"Gold Lady Justice Statue on the top of the Old Bailey in London, England, with a sunset sky in the background\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" srcset=\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/72\/2023\/02\/The-Old-Bailey-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/72\/2023\/02\/The-Old-Bailey-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/72\/2023\/02\/The-Old-Bailey-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/72\/2023\/02\/The-Old-Bailey-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/72\/2023\/02\/The-Old-Bailey-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/72\/2023\/02\/The-Old-Bailey-272x182.jpg 272w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-27052\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gold Lady Justice Statue on the top of the Old Bailey in London<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>So we should not be surprised to learn that women\u2019s progress to the judiciary here has been slow and halting \u2013 two steps forward, one step back \u2013 from the time the first woman was appointed to a permanent judicial role in 1956, to the first woman appointed to our highest court in 2004, and beyond.<\/p>\n<p>The UK does not have a career judiciary as do most continental jurisdictions.\u00a0 Instead, our judges are drawn from the ranks of practising lawyers, originally only barristers, but now occasionally solicitors and academics.\u00a0 Thus, instead of women entering the profession as soon as they finish their legal training, which leads to much better female representation in continental judiciaries, in the UK they must first establish themselves in a profession which admits more women at the start and then begins to lose them all along the way to the top.<\/p>\n<p>The higher the status of the role, of course, the more exclusive the club and the more resistant members are to the appointment of people who are not like themselves \u2013 mainly white men educated at public school and Oxbridge \u2013 which explains why the proportion of women and people from ethnic minorities remains so low at the top.<\/p>\n<p>Does it matter? Aren\u2019t all judges dedicated to doing justice by applying the law objectively and rationally, and faithfully following precedent? That depends on whether you think objectivity and rationality, and following precedent, do actually do justice in every case; whether, indeed, you believe it is possible to be objective when you reason from a very limited knowledge of life and experience.<\/p>\n<p>Lady Hale, recently retired from the presidency of our Supreme Court, came to the conclusion across her long career that the presence of women (and other people from different backgrounds than the archetypal white male) <em>does<\/em> indeed make a difference to judging \u2013 precisely because such people have difference experiences, see different things, offer different perspectives.\u00a0 Hale herself not only exemplified this difference as a state-educated woman but made a point of carrying it into practice in her judgments.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_26908\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-26908\" style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-26908\" src=\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/72\/2023\/02\/Baroness_Hale_2017-233x300.jpg\" alt=\"Lady Hale\" width=\"400\" height=\"516\" srcset=\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/72\/2023\/02\/Baroness_Hale_2017-233x300.jpg 233w, https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/72\/2023\/02\/Baroness_Hale_2017-794x1024.jpg 794w, https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/72\/2023\/02\/Baroness_Hale_2017-768x990.jpg 768w, https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/72\/2023\/02\/Baroness_Hale_2017.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-26908\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lady Hale in 2017. Image: Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>An avowed feminist, she lost no opportunity to show (where relevant) that laws can have a very different impact on women and children than on men; that women and children might have different viewpoints from men; that the court should recognise these, rather than blindly following precedents set with men in mind.\u00a0 It was not just women and children, where her personal experience counted.\u00a0 She showed how, if you are already different through one characteristic, you are more likely to appreciate other people\u2019s differences \u2013 so she could see where distinctions of class, or race, or ability or sexuality \u2013 affected one\u2019s access to rights.<\/p>\n<p>For example, in the \u2018bedroom tax\u2019 case, where the Supreme Court considered the legality of the government\u2019s cap on housing benefit, Hale held that the policy discriminated against a woman claimant, a victim of domestic violence, whose home had been specially adapted under a sanctuary scheme.\u00a0 Supreme Court cases are heard by five justices, and three of the other four \u2013 all men \u2013 expressed sympathy for the woman but upheld the policy.<\/p>\n<p>This was but one of many cases, in some of which her view carried the day and in others, like this one, where she could only write a powerful dissent \u2013 where her sensitivity to the realities of life for women, children, gay and disabled people and people from ethnic minorities led her to a different outcome from that of the men whose preference was to apply the law faithfully, rather than to adapt it to do justice.\u00a0 It is not, of course, that men cannot do this \u2013 there have been plenty of liberal judges \u2013 but, rather, that they so often do not even see the difference, because nothing in their narrow lived experience has opened their eyes to it or caused them to care.<\/p>\n<p>As the sole woman in the highest court until the very end of her career, Lady Hale achieved the almost unimaginable against the backdrop of our country\u2019s judicial history: she won the respect and admiration of her male colleagues, whose limited experience and understanding of lives very different from her own was made so conspicuous by her presence.\u00a0 She widened their horizons, sometimes changed their views, even changed the law.<\/p>\n<p>She is the living exemplar of why women judges matter, especially in the UK with its narrow pool of candidates and persistent tradition of exclusion.\u00a0 Towards the end of her career, there were three women (out of 12) in the Supreme Court.\u00a0 Today there is only one.\u00a0 As I said before, two steps forward, one step back.\u00a0 If we want justice for everyone, we need better courts than this.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reading.ac.uk\/law\/our-staff\/rosemary-auchmuty\">Rosemary Auchmuty<\/a> is a Professor in the School of Law at the University of Reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Law-making was an entirely male activity in the UK until just over a century ago and has been dominated by men ever since.\u00a0 Barred from both standing and voting for&#8230;<a class=\"read-more\" href=\"&#104;&#116;&#116;&#112;&#115;&#58;&#47;&#47;&#114;&#101;&#115;&#101;&#97;&#114;&#99;&#104;&#46;&#114;&#101;&#97;&#100;&#105;&#110;&#103;&#46;&#97;&#99;&#46;&#117;&#107;&#47;&#114;&#101;&#115;&#101;&#97;&#114;&#99;&#104;&#45;&#98;&#108;&#111;&#103;&#47;&#50;&#48;&#50;&#51;&#47;&#48;&#51;&#47;&#49;&#48;&#47;&#119;&#104;&#121;&#45;&#119;&#101;&#45;&#110;&#101;&#101;&#100;&#45;&#109;&#111;&#114;&#101;&#45;&#119;&#111;&#109;&#101;&#110;&#45;&#106;&#117;&#100;&#103;&#101;&#115;&#45;&#105;&#110;&#45;&#116;&#104;&#101;&#45;&#117;&#107;&#47;\">Read More ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":693,"featured_media":27052,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"__cvm_playback_settings":[],"__cvm_video_id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[2277,2316,506,2317,2097,2318,2315],"class_list":["post-26903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prosperity-resilience","tag-feature","tag-international-day-of-women-judges","tag-justice","tag-legal-profession","tag-supreme-court","tag-uk","tag-women-judges"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.8.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why we need more women judges in the UK - Connecting Research<\/title>\n<meta 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