Transcript

More and more women are going into the law as solicitors, barristers, legal executives, academics.  Indeed, in England and Wales more women than men now qualify as barristers.  But far fewer women get promoted to the highest levels. There is only one woman, Brenda Hale, on the UK Supreme Court.

Around the world, feminists have been developing an important critique of legal systems and the assumptions underpinning law making.

So what does it mean, ‘being a feminist barrister’? Two feminist lawyers, Alison Diduck, Professor of Law at University College London, and barrister and novelist Elizabeth Woodcraft spoke at a meeting of the Haldane Society – Pod Academy was there to record what they said.

Elizabeth Woodcraft, whose latest collection of short stories, A Sense of Occasion has just been published, made another podcast for Pod Academy, about feminist legal judgments, what would be the impact of having feminism informing the writing of legal judgments. The podcast features supreme court judge Justice Baroness Brenda Hale and Professor Rosemary Hunter of Queen Mary College, Univ of London and Professor Rosemary Auchmuty, of Reading University.

Photo:  Mike Cough/Blogtrepreneur

Tags: Feminism, Feminist legal judgements, Haldane Society, The Law, Women barristers