Social and political dynamics in the feminization of judiciary

Abstract

We now live at a time when a record number of women serve in the judiciary across the globe, including Asia. Women judges appear in lower courts as well as sitting in top courts, including supreme courts and constitutional courts with the final power to determine the law in a given jurisdiction. Melissa Crouch’s edited volume, Women and the Judiciary in the Asia-Pacific, cannot be more timely in analyzing what the contributors define as “the feminisation of the judiciary” (at 3–4). In this informative volume, the growing presence of women judges is reported and analyzed in the Pacific islands, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Nepal, and India (at 5–23). To supplement the discussion in Crouch’s volume, it should be noted that other Asian jurisdictions also witness a growing presence of women in the top judiciary.1 Japan now has two women justices out of fifteen on the Supreme Court,2 down from the record number of three women justices in the previous years.3 South Korea has three women justices out of nine justices on the Constitutional Court,4 and four women justices out of fourteen justices on the Supreme Court.5 Taiwan has four women justices out of fifteen justices on the Constitutional Court.6 Mongolia has had one woman justice out of nine justices on the Constitutional Court since 2018.7 In November 2019, Myanmar appointed its first female Chief Justice of the State High Court.8 In January 2022, Pakistan appointed the first woman justice, Justice Ayesha Malik, to its seventy-five-year-old Supreme Court.9 Before her appointment, Pakistan was the only nation in South Asia to have never had a female Supreme Court judge.10