The feminization of justice in Belgium (20th century) (FWOAL540)

The issues. Few social sectors are feminising as rapidly as the judicial world. Law faculties are training increasing numbers of women lawyers and in just a few short decades stubborn male bastions such as the judiciary and the bar changed into large female-dominated work places (with an average of 40% in Western Europe). However, there has been very little academic research into this process and its impact on the working of the judicial system and its actors (De Rooij, 2007). In Belgium in particular, the feminisation of justice forms a lacuna in research. This project aims to change that; it proposes to extend knowledge and general awareness of the differences and existing inequalities between men and women in representation, the administration of justice and professional practices. This project poses questions about the start of this feminisation and the legislation which made it possible; it discusses the changes in the ratio of men to women and inequalities within the Belgian judiciary since the years 1940-50; and finally it investigates the real and/or alleged characteristics of feminine administration of justice. This feminisation forms an important component in the process of the democratisation and professionalisation of justice since the beginning, and more particularly since the middle of the twentieth century. This study links into a growing international interest in the dialectic between gender and law/justice (Levit & Verchick, 2006; Mossman, 2006; Thornton, 1996). After the Second World War the difficulty of access to the bar for women and their exclusion from legal office was increasingly questioned within the judiciary, by the women's movement and civil society more generally. The argument at that time, not least from the National Women's Council, is still valid today: the democratic nature of the institutions calls for a balanced composition that reflects society, a prerequisite for the creation of confidence in the constitutional state. The absence of such a that balance suggests that the world of policy is/was a world of and for men. In this way a picture of the past is maintained in which politics and judiciary elude, as it were, the actual mixed composition of society (Van Molle & Gubin, 1998). That starting point, derived from gender studies and the political sciences, is coupled in this project with the study of the judicial system and its links with the legislative and executive power. The structural interaction between the judiciary and the political establishment around the concept of "democracy" is a central element with that. An attempt was made to remedy some of the gaps in Belgian research on this theme during an international study day organised in April 2008 by the RHEA-Gender & Diversity Research Centre (Faculty of Law and Criminology, VUB) - of which the chief promoter M. De Metsenaere is principal - with the title Tweespraak: In haar recht? Vrouwe Justitia feministisch bekeken. On this occasion light was shed on the factors which have played a role in the breakthrough of women in the administration of justice and which influence the position of women at the various levels of the legal system (as legal staff, as perpetrators, and as victims). Academics and experts in the field reported the current position and entered into a dialogue which crossed national borders, given the lively cooperation on this occasion with foreign researchers. The results of this study day will shortly be published by VUB-Press (De Metsenaere et al., 2009). However, these are summary results, which from a scholarly point of view still need to be completely elaborated and researched. The promoters will lend their expertise to this research project. M. De Metsenaere has served as director of research projects into language use in the Brussels judiciary since the Second World War; the protection of women's interests in the Belgian Parliament; and gender influence on academic careers. She has also published on women and repression and on masculinity (De Metsenaere et al., 2007 & De Metsenaere et al., 2004). The co-promoter of this research project, D. Heirbaut (Ghent University) teaches history of law and Roman law in the Ghent Law Faculty and is director of the Law History Institute there. His previous work in this field of research was in the context of his publications on the history of justice in Belgium in general (Heirbaut et al., 2004). He has also published on medieval feudal law, the methodology of the history of law and, in recent years, the development of Belgian law in the 19th and the 20th centuries in particular. He has focused mainly on the codification of the law and Belgian legal tradition. Under his direction, research has also been carried out at Ghent University into the legal professions (including the bar) within an Interuniversity Attraction Pole (IUAP). He will undertake the supervision of the law history aspects of this research project. He will also be responsible for contacts with law history research institutions, in particular the Max Planck Institut für Europäische Rechtsgeschichte in Frankfurt, and law historians in the neighbouring countries.

Keywords:Interdisciplinary Study of the Law, Meta-Law

Disciplines:Law and legal studies