Gender Bias in the Court Room

Written by Pantea Jamshidi Nouri

‘Overly dominant’ were the words used to describe Helena Biggs by her manager Steve Roberts when she began to speak up against occurrences of discrimination and misconduct at the UK-based firm where she was employed. In Ontario, a pregnant attorney was told by her superior that she needed to ‘stop having children’. A human rights lawyer and activist based in New Delhi was fired after taking a day off due to abdominal pain and fatigue from her menstrual cycle. Sharon Goldzweig, a 65-year old attorney in New York, filed a suit against her employer stating that she was laid off because of her age and gender after working with her company for a considerable amount of time. A common factor among these women is their commitment and willingness to work for a system that fails to shelter them from gender biases.

Legal systems around the world aim to ensure justice from an objective, bias-free point of view. However, as women continue to make significant strides in the legal profession, gender biases continue to affect judicial decisions, completely undermining the values of equality & fairness on which the judicial system is built upon. Although both men and women face considerable amounts of bias in the courtroom and law firms, women are disproportionately affected by biased perceptions as a result of traditional gender roles established by the patriarchy.

Techniques generally used by attorneys to evoke support and empathy from the jury can backfire when an attorney is female. Female vocal tones are often subject to scrutiny. In a research study from the Journal of Law and Human Behavior comparing the effects of male attorneys and female attorneys expressing anger while delivering a closing statement in court, male attorneys were perceived as impactful, whereas women were seen as more emotional and shriller. In the legal field, women are told to avoid speaking in angry tones when questioning eyewitnesses. This not only is detrimental to women looking to advance in their careers and become successful in the legal field, but it is additionally harmful to the people affected by those warped judicial outcomes. More research has shown that women who displayed impatience or anger were more likely to be perceived as irrational and disagreeable by members of the jury. These perceptions lead to increased policing of women’s composures and behaviors to advance the interests of firms and the desired outcome of a trial. As a result, a woman’s career of helping clients seek the justice they deserve is rendered playing a game of prudence in order to seem competent, but not too forward.

Gender bias against female attorneys continues to permeate not only the process of the judicial process, but also the minor details concerning women in the court room. While men can wear suits and remain satisfied without scrutiny from other members of the court room, female attorneys often have to deal with criticism regarding their clothing choices. There is this implicit dress code that women must follow, such as wearing adequate makeup, covering up grey roots, medium-length hair, and wearing heels that aren’t too long nor too short. Female attorneys are often told to smile in order to offset neutral yet standoffish facial expressions.

In the court room, women are severely outnumbered by men outside of the attorney position. According to the Women’s Donor Network, women made up 17 percent of elected prosecutors, where women of color made up 1 percent. In the judiciary, 3 out of 9 seats in the United States Supreme Court were given to women, and in the state courts, 22 percent of the judges were white women, while women of color made up 8 percent, according to the American Bar Association. In terms of compensation, women lawyers were paid about 80 percent of an average male lawyer’s salary, as reported by the 2018 Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In addition to the blatant behavioral disparities between men and women in the court room, these disparities are even more magnified when it comes to women of color. According to the American Bar Association, almost two-thirds of BIPOC women were ostracized from networking opportunities. In a survey, many women of color described consistently feeling anxious from avoiding stereotypes pertaining to their race and gender. Kadisha Phelps, a successful 37-year-old African American woman working at a firm in Miami, admitted that she brings a white male colleague with her every time she goes to the court room. She explained that the “older white man at the table carries some kind of credibility…it gives the judges assurance that it’s not just some little black girl out there on her own.”

The numerous gaps between men and women in the legal profession, where the objective is to secure fairness and equality within a society, are problematic and serve as evidence that traditional gender norms are as salient as ever. It poses the question of how we can trust a system known to emphasize balance and justice to protect female members of society when it is susceptible to the same forces that prevent women from advancing in their professional and personal lives.

In order to reduce gender biases in the legal profession, governments can take on the role of creating task forces to promote diversity in law enforcement and court appointments; encouraging higher representation of BIPOC women in the jury pool, creating educational programs, and bridging inequities in access to legal representation for lower-income people. It is the responsibility of government, legal, and educational institutions to educate the public on how to recognize gender biases, where those biases stem from, and methods to eliminate those negative attitudes. Investing time and energy into phasing out these biases is an investment in strengthening our institutions to uphold values of equity and justice, consequently benefiting citizens in the long run.