Although women are represented in many judicial systems, particularly in the U.S., they still aren’t represented at the same levels that men are. While the percentage of women in judicial systems varies from one country to the next, we’ll use the United States as an example.

According to the latest statistics, women only make up about 26% of the sitting circuit judges and about 34.5% of active judges in the U.S Judicial system. Yet, women make up 51% of the total population.

That goes to show just about everyone that women are underrepresented as judges. We learned all of this thanks to a holiday called the International Day of  Women Judges — a holiday that’s observed every March 10th.

The History Of International Day Of Women Judges

This holiday was first observed on March 10th, 2022. It was created by the United Nations after they passed UN General Assembly Resolution 75/274 in 2021.

This day was conceived as a holiday that served as an important milestone in ensuring ongoing efforts toward gender equality and building upon the Global Judicial Integrity Network’s work toward addressing gender-related judicial integrity issues. This holiday has been observed ever since all around the globe.

Some Facts About Gender Representation In Judicial Job Occupations

To highlight the issue of underrepresentation in the judicial field, we thought that we’d list some of the things that we uncovered during our research. Although we already went over the stats of how many women currently work in the U.S judicial system as judges, we thought that we’d expand on that by including other jobs in this field. Let’s take a look at them below.

• About 37.9% of lawyers in the U.S are women.
• About 84.8% of paralegals and legal assistants in the U.S are women.
• About 72.1% of title examiners in the U.S are women.
• In the world, the percentage of judges that were women rose from 35% in 2008 to 40% in 2017.
• In national supreme courts around the world, women only represent 41% of the judges and only about 25% of the court presidents.
• Women’s representation in judicial systems around the world is rising, but it’s happening at an extremely slow rate.

Observing International Day Of Women Judges

This holiday is one that encourages everyone to get involved with gender equality. And people can do this in different ways. They can take a stand for women’s rights by protesting or writing letters to their government representatives, they can encourage girls and young women to pursue a career in the law, and they can advocate for underprivileged women. People can also spread the news about this holiday using the hashtag #InternationalDayOfWomenJudges.