Judges, Women As
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WOMEN IN TODAY'S WORLD, Forthcoming
8 Pages Posted: 20 Jun 2011 Last revised: 3 Dec 2013
Date Written: January 1, 2011
Abstract
Women's participation in the judiciary is one indicator of aspirational and actualized formal and substantive gender equality. It symbolizes and engages broader issues such as access to political power, conceptions of agency and strategies for furthering social citizenship. The first part of this entry is an overview of the commonalities and divergences lens through which the judicial role can be examined. The second part outlines similarities that female judges share across multiple jurisdictions. It sketches out the shared features of the gendered legal culture in which women work, such as the persistence of overt and more subtle discrimination and assumptions about women's natural tendencies toward certain kinds of labor.
Keywords: gender, judiciary, social power, mediation
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