Single white female – despite the diversity talk, the Bar is still a man's world
In such established old boys' networks as the Bar and the judiciary, improving diversity – whether in terms of gender, race or class – was always going to be a challenge. Even so, the annual silk round and the Supreme Court judge appointments this week confirm just how much progress is still needed. At the Supreme Court, the promotion of three more white males to the bench means Lady Hale looks set to be the only female representative on the UK's highest court for another five years to come.
February 28, 2013 at 07:03 PM
3 minute read
In such established old boys' networks as the Bar and the judiciary, improving diversity – whether in terms of gender, race or class – was always going to be a challenge. Even so, the annual silk round and the Supreme Court judge appointments this week confirm just how much progress is still needed.
At the Supreme Court, the promotion of three more white males to the bench means Lady Hale looks set to be the only female representative on the UK's highest court for another five years to come.
A statistic that is all the more embarrassing given confirmation of the latest arrivals came only days after Hale herself gave a speech on the subject of equality, in which she called for affirmative action to correct the balance and ensure that the senior judiciary in particular represents the best of all walks of life, not just an Old Etonian/Oxbridge common room.
For all the talk of boosting diversity at the Bar in recent years, it hit a similarly low point in the annual silk round. Here, women made up 14% of the 183 applicants with, more crucially, the number of women applying falling by a third year-on-year.
This takes the number of female candidates to its lowest level since the Bar first started counting in 1995. All of which undermines the Bar's point that female applicants were proportionately more successful than their male counterparts.
Of course, the decline in female candidates needs to be set against the fact overall silk applications also fell and that women barristers are, arguably, more likely to be working in areas such as family law, which have been hit by legal aid cuts.
Even allowing that argument to stand, it doesn't change the fact that women should be equally represented across all areas of law – not just the supposedly female-friendly bits.
And discussions about gender equality are only the tip of the iceberg, as those from ethnic minority backgrounds and those with disabilities fare significantly worse in all of this, while the educational background of applicants has not even been taken into account.
Not that private practice lawyers are providing a shining example for the Bar to follow, despite positive initiatives such as PRIME and various efforts by firms to retain more senior women.
Sadly, there is no quick-fix solution as solving the problem means dealing with myriad issues from education and selection to work/life balance and childcare. But that doesn't mean the legal sector should stop trying. How can it if it wants to reflect the society it is supposed to represent?
As Lady Hale argues, part of the problem is "getting people who have never suffered discrimination simply on grounds of the colour of their skin or the difference in their chromosomes to understand what it is all about".
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