Page 28 - Judicial Diversity Update report

2.25. Second, the relative success of women in High Court competitions does not
appear to be widely appreciated by women in the pool. The fact that women
are being appointed younger and more quickly than men should spur greater
confidence in applications. We recommend that more be done to highlight the
success rates of women applicants to the High Court, and the steady increase
in the overall proportion of women in the judiciary.

2.26. Third, it is important to recognise the continued fragility of the numbers of
women in the senior judiciary. While percentages may be up, the overall
number of women judges remains low. This is a problem in and of itself. Too
few women judges are involved in, and are seen to be involved in, deciding
cases and in developing the common law. It also presents a problem for the
pipeline into the highest courts. Given appointments to the Court of Appeal
and Supreme Court tend to see the promotion of existing judges, the low
number of women on the High Court represents a significant challenge for
changing the gender mix of the Court of Appeal and ultimately the Supreme
Court of the future. Without an adequate pool of women candidates gaining
suitable experience and being able to prove themselves worthy of higher
appointment, the most senior courts will continue to be dominated by men. In
this regard, we reiterate our earlier recommendation that diverse Court of
Appeal and Supreme Court appointments be made from outside the serving
judiciary.

2.27. Finally, it is worth noting that we do not have adequate data on how gender
intersects with other key characteristics such as ethnicity and professional
background to be able to come to any conclusions as to how, for example,
black women or women solicitors fare in judicial appointments processes. To
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the extent to which this data exists, the picture is not very encouraging.

58 See: ‘How diverse are law firms?’, Solicitors Regulation Authority, available online at
https://www.sra.org.uk/sra/equality-diversity/key-findings/law-firms-2017/.
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