Gender quotas would help balance our judiciary – Seery-Kearney

The introduction of gender quotas should be considered to help address the imbalance on our judiciary, a Fine Gael Senator has said.

Senator Seery-Kearney says the time has come for a radical shake up, noting this week marks the 99^th anniversary of Frances Kyle and Averil Deverell becoming the first female barristers in Ireland.

Senator Seery-Kearney said: “Ireland called its first women barrister six months before the first woman was called to the English Bar. We were radical then in our courage to appoint women.  While a woman has been appointed to the highest office in Irish law, Ms Justice Susan Denham served as Chief Justice from 2011 to 2017, she was however the first and only female Chief Justice to date.  More needs to be done if we are to ensure that women’s voices are heard in our courts.

“As a country, we have a considerably low number of judges per head of population when compared with our European counterparts. The Association of Judges in Ireland state that at present 27.4% of Irish judges are female, which is remarkably low. In the District Court, almost 30% or 19 out of 64 are female. The Circuit Court has 37% female representation. In the High Court, women constitute 17% of the judges, and in the Supreme Court the figure is 12.5%.

“We must do better to work towards gender balance in our judiciary. There is scope to appoint additional judges across all levels of our Four Courts, using temporary gender quotas to address the imbalance.

“There is no doubt that great strides have been made in recent years.  More women are being appointed as partners in law firms and there have been great initiatives to provide mentoring programmes through both the Law Society and the Bar Council of Ireland. However the attrition rate for women from law, particularly at the Bar, remains higher when compared with their male counterparts.

“52% of our barristers, upon the last report are women.  They tend to represent a higher proportion of those practising in criminal and family law and a significantly lower percentage of those practicing in the Senior Bar and the more lucrative areas of civil law. This is not unique to law, it is throughout every field of work.  The 4^th of November is Work Equal Day, the date after which women work for free due to the gender pay gap. Lower numbers of women at the Senior Bar has a significant impact on the appointment of women to the judiciary, which is borne out in the numbers of female judges today.

“The time has come for a radical shake up.  If we are serious about ensuring that the voice and perspective of women is heard and at the centre of leadership and decision making in our society, then we must address this across all areas of leadership and the judiciary should not be excluded from that,” Senator Seery-Kearney concluded.