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In Back to the Bar 2019, the Western Circuit’s Women’s Forum (WCWF) published evidence showing that two-thirds of those who left the Bar over a six-year period were women. Almost all the men who left became judges or retired after long careers. The vast majority of the women who left dropped out mid-career, citing the difficulty of balancing work and family life.
Today, COVID-19 working practices threaten further significant and disproportionate attrition of women from the Bar. Our concern focuses on the primary carers, who are disproportionately women. In this article, we highlight these risks and recommend practical steps to minimise them.
A key finding of our 2019 survey was that most women who left the Bar cited the difficulty of balancing work and family commitments as a factor in their decision to leave. It was overwhelmingly the case in the survey responses that female practitioners had primary care of their children, and primary responsibility for arranging childcare.
Initially, COVID-19 restrictions meant a dramatic loss of commercial and gratuitous childcare and patchy and part-time availability of schools. Many practitioners had to combine childcare and home-schooling responsibilities while also trying to keep meeting professional commitments and maintain some income. (While barristers are classed as ‘key workers’, we heard of many schools open only for children of ‘critical workers’; and where open, the school day was shorter than the court day.) As the rate of infection increases, requirements for self-isolation and local lockdowns will cause these issues to recur, this time unpredictably and at short notice.
In our paper about COVID, we recorded the concerns raised by members about the pressures of remote hearings and our concern that initial guidance issued by the Judiciary appeared to compound the problem. Our example was from the Guidance for the Conduct of Remote Costs Hearings [37] which failed to recognise the practical problems and threatened adverse costs:
‘In all remote hearing cases the parties must recognise that the hearings may not commence at the appointed time and/or conclude in the time estimate and must make themselves available well beyond the time allotted to allow for such contingencies which may include technical difficulties or cases running over. Legal representatives are reminded that it will not be appropriate for them to expect to be able to conduct multiple hearings in proximity of time as a consequence of these matters and costs orders may be made against them if they are unable to attend as required.’
We were heartened by the positive response by many courts to this.
Re-opening courts for more substantive hearings is welcomed, but may increase practical difficulties for those who are clinically vulnerable and who are shielding themselves or others, as well as primary carers until childcare has returned to normal.
There looks likely to be a significant risk over a prolonged period now to the practices of those with shielding and caring responsibilities who are unable to attend court. We are confident this risk can be minimised by clear judicial leadership and guidance as to the listing and conduct of cases, and our recommendation is to continue to ‘Consider the Carers’ and ‘Consider the Shielders’ at the point of clerking, listing, interim and full hearings.
In Back to the Bar 2019, the Western Circuit’s Women’s Forum (WCWF) published evidence showing that two-thirds of those who left the Bar over a six-year period were women. Almost all the men who left became judges or retired after long careers. The vast majority of the women who left dropped out mid-career, citing the difficulty of balancing work and family life.
Today, COVID-19 working practices threaten further significant and disproportionate attrition of women from the Bar. Our concern focuses on the primary carers, who are disproportionately women. In this article, we highlight these risks and recommend practical steps to minimise them.
A key finding of our 2019 survey was that most women who left the Bar cited the difficulty of balancing work and family commitments as a factor in their decision to leave. It was overwhelmingly the case in the survey responses that female practitioners had primary care of their children, and primary responsibility for arranging childcare.
Initially, COVID-19 restrictions meant a dramatic loss of commercial and gratuitous childcare and patchy and part-time availability of schools. Many practitioners had to combine childcare and home-schooling responsibilities while also trying to keep meeting professional commitments and maintain some income. (While barristers are classed as ‘key workers’, we heard of many schools open only for children of ‘critical workers’; and where open, the school day was shorter than the court day.) As the rate of infection increases, requirements for self-isolation and local lockdowns will cause these issues to recur, this time unpredictably and at short notice.
In our paper about COVID, we recorded the concerns raised by members about the pressures of remote hearings and our concern that initial guidance issued by the Judiciary appeared to compound the problem. Our example was from the Guidance for the Conduct of Remote Costs Hearings [37] which failed to recognise the practical problems and threatened adverse costs:
‘In all remote hearing cases the parties must recognise that the hearings may not commence at the appointed time and/or conclude in the time estimate and must make themselves available well beyond the time allotted to allow for such contingencies which may include technical difficulties or cases running over. Legal representatives are reminded that it will not be appropriate for them to expect to be able to conduct multiple hearings in proximity of time as a consequence of these matters and costs orders may be made against them if they are unable to attend as required.’
We were heartened by the positive response by many courts to this.
Re-opening courts for more substantive hearings is welcomed, but may increase practical difficulties for those who are clinically vulnerable and who are shielding themselves or others, as well as primary carers until childcare has returned to normal.
There looks likely to be a significant risk over a prolonged period now to the practices of those with shielding and caring responsibilities who are unable to attend court. We are confident this risk can be minimised by clear judicial leadership and guidance as to the listing and conduct of cases, and our recommendation is to continue to ‘Consider the Carers’ and ‘Consider the Shielders’ at the point of clerking, listing, interim and full hearings.
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