International Women's Day Post: Encouraging female judges

Lord Neuberger has raised concerns about 'subconscious bias' in the appointment of women judges. Is subconscious bias at play and, if so, where does it come from?

Like Lord Neuberger, I do not favour positive discrimination. I agree that it would be patronising to have a special place for women and it would be wholly wrong to appoint a less able woman over a better qualified man simply because of her gender. But something does need to be done to address the gender imbalance in our judiciary. We are out of line with other civilised societies in having so few women at the top of the legal world.

We have a huge pool of female talent entering the legal world so why are more not getting to the top? The problem lies not with the application process itself but in getting women to the point of making an application. The statistics speak for themselves. Women make up a small proportion of the applicants for silk or judicial appointment. Those that do apply are statistically more likely to be successful. I do not believe that there is bias one way or another once an applicant is in the system. Applicants are assessed against clear criteria and gender is not relevant (and should not be).

Of course, we will lose some women who decide they want to stay at home with children but it is perfectly possibly to combine a successful career in the law with a family. So why then are there not more female applicants?

Personally, I think Lord Neuberger may have hit the nail on the head when he said "women are much more likely to think I'm not good enough". Yesterday, teenagers up and down the country got the results of exam modules which will count towards GSCE's AS and A levels. My children are in single sex schools. My son texted me with his results. My daughter rang for a chat about hers. I could literally hear crying in the background, the girls were agonising over dropped grades and "poor" results. I asked my son how the boys generally thought they got on. "Good" was all I got! The girls consistently do slightly better than the boys but while the girls were focusing on where they might have done better, the boys were celebrating their success. Broadly, the results were objectively exactly the same!

I have seen much the same at the Bar. When I started, my female colleagues and I used to joke about how we would come back to Chambers and report a disappointing result and worry about our abilities when our male contemporaries would be reporting much the same result as a great victory! I believe women are more inclined to want reassurance that they are doing a good job. Men (and yes I know I am generalising) often find that affirmation in themselves.

If I am right, this might go part of the way to explaining an apparent reluctance on the part of women to enter the application process. My own experience of applying for silk suggests that once in the process, an evidence based approach is a good one for women. Success does not depend on a subjective view of how good you are but an objective assessment against the criteria.

So, writing this on International Women's Day, I would like to endorse Lord Neuberger's suggestion that "we should think of going to women and encouraging them to apply for promotion". There are lots of great female lawyers out there - let's see more being encouraged to see their strengths and put themselves forward for appointment.