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Study questions validity of findings that female judges are interrupted more
Are female judges interrupted more frequently than their male counterparts? A follow-up study has questioned the validity of the findings with a much broader sample base.
Naomi Neilson
Drawing on the findings from “Female Judges, Interrupted”, researchers with University of NSW’s Law Review found there was “no significant evidence” that female members of the bar were interrupted far more frequently than their male colleagues.
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Examining over 20 years of judgements, the study “Querying the Gender Dynamics of Interruptions” found that although Amelia Loughland is deserving of credit for her work, the findings “cannot be confirmed as a statistically meaningful result”. The new, follow-up study found there was no evidence of discrimination against female judges.
“None of our models, including the simplest test of a relationship between gender and interruptions, establish a gender effect: the only time the gender variable reaches the standard levels of statistical significance, it points in the opposite direction,” confirmed researchers Tonja Jacobi, Zoe Robinson and Patrick Leslie in their report.
While their findings do not mean there is a bias towards male judges, they did find that once the analysis accounts for the role of the Chief Justice, experiences, extent of the judicial speech at oral argument and the length of the oral argument, “it becomes clear that these other variables are far more significant in predicting interruptions”.
The new study broadened Ms Loughland’s two-year study to 25 years and used much “more formal statistical methods” to test the gendered effect, including the amount that the Chief Justice addresses the court. Using this method, the researchers found there was no validity to the claim the interruptions increased with Chief Justice Susan Kiefel.
Addressing the two-year study period, the researchers added that had Ms Loughland’s analysing picked a random period between 2005 and 2013, she would have found that male judges were interrupted more frequently based on her statistical methods. Those findings, had she pursued them, would be “unreliable for the same reasons”, however.
The result the researches do agree with is Ms Loughland’s finding that there is a clear gender difference in advocating interruption behaviour. While an “unfortunate pattern” to observe, “this difference is dissipating significantly over time”.
Although only one of Ms Loughland’s theories holds, she was not wrong to question the gendered biases at the court, a “phenomenon” that should be paid close attention to.
“But the findings that the High Court does not display any significant evidence of bias in terms of female justices being interrupted disproportionately at least in seven-justice panels, or any evidence whatsoever that men make better Chief Justices than women in ensuring gender equality, are results we should celebrate,” the researchers said.
