First Lady

So, the men did not quite make it to a hundred. It would be perverse of me today not to dwell on what master of the rolls Sir Geoffrey Vos has rightly described as a ‘landmark in our national life’ – the installation of the first lady chief justice, the 98th judge to hold the top post. Dame Sue Carr chose her own title and it seems apposite in the circumstances that it recognises her gender, even though she could have adopted the neutral term ‘chief justice’.

To most laypersons unfamiliar with ‘The Law’, I suspect Carr’s appointment will barely raise an eyebrow, if it registers at all. Paradoxically, that surely counts as progress.

The number of peaks that women lawyers have yet to conquer is declining by the year. So it seems reasonable to acknowledge how far the legal profession has come, and how quickly, after decades of inertia during which civil society rapidly morphed around it.

To give an example, our first woman prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, had been in office almost a decade when the first woman was appointed to the Court of Appeal (Lady Justice Butler-Sloss, 1988). Today, there are 10 lady justices of appeal.

Thatcher was just a year away from becoming Conservative party leader when Rose Heilbron became only the second woman appointed to the High Court, in 1974. There are solicitors still working today who were gainfully employed in 1974.

Sir Geoffrey was also correct, however, in stating that the appointment of the first woman LCJ must not make society ‘complacent’ in the quest for gender equality. There might be 10 women on the appeal court bench, but that is still less then a third of the total. And a photograph of the 11 Supreme Court justices released for Carr’s swearing-in is another disconcerting reminder that the senior judiciary is anything but representative. Ten white men and Lady Rose.

One can say the same about the senior echelons of our biggest law firms, as our feature on diversity in partnerships recognises today. The dial is proving stubbornly difficult to shift, particularly in relation to women partners.

This may be as much to do with an obsolescent workplace culture as it is about men appointing in their own image – but the debate is hardly settled.