Roundtable "Women on the Bench"

In long-established western democracies, women have made inroads as judges only during the past few decades. In post-conflict and transitional developing countries, however, women constitute an increasingly larger proportion of judges. Why is this so? Situations of political rupture generally create new opportunity structures; some may favour the entry of women into public positions of power. Post-conflict assistance often includes gender friendly rule of law reforms, and the conflict itself may have attracted more attention to rights issues. How do these conditions affect women’s access to, and utilization of, positions of judicial power? What are the main pathways of women judges to the bench? What are the gendered experiences of women on the bench? In this roundtable we invite participants from the “Women on the Bench” research project to reflect on the experiences of women judges in five fragile states across the world: Afghanistan, Angola, Guatemala, Haiti, and Uganda. This session is part of the CMI/LawTransform project “Women on the Bench” funded by the RCN.