The same old reasons for not appointing women are always trotted out. There are not enough high quality women lawyers available to choose from. High Court judges are chosen from the ranks of top advocates, barristers and Queens Counsels, and their numbers include few women. But the truth is that the arguments against appointing women are mere convenient smokescreens to hide a deeper, institutional, discriminatory myopia. In the last 30 years or so we have seen an enormous influx of women into law schools so that they now comprise over half of the intake and over half the graduating classes.
Women are at the top of the legal profession, but they appear in many guises.
The numbers may not be huge, but they are there, you just need to open your eyes to see them. But why is it so important that women participate in judging at the highest level in Australia. There are three reasons. But first I want to clarify something. Everything I am about to say operates regardless of whether one thinks that women judges would decide cases in a particular way, which is different to the way men judges decide.