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Gender, Judging and Job Satisfaction

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Abstract

Though the overall numbers of women judges remain small, higher proportions of women have been appointed to many lower courts in common law, and particularly in civil law, countries. This paper investigates whether the experiences of judging and judicial work differ among women and men magistrates in Australia’s lower courts. The particular focus is satisfaction with their work as judges. In so doing, it helps build up a picture of the extent of the gendered nature of the judiciary as an occupation. Measures of overall job satisfaction identify few gender differences; more refined measures highlight areas of divergence between men and women magistrates, suggesting gendered experiences of judicial work which result from particular characteristics of the occupation, as presently constituted, rather than the nature of judging itself.

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Notes

  1. Australia is a federal system, with national courts and a court system for each state operating separately. Commonwealth courts include the High Court, the Federal Court, the Family Court and the Federal Magistrates Court. Each Australian state and territory has a Supreme Court, and a Magistrates or Local Court (as it is called in New South Wales). There is also an intermediate trial court, the District or County Court, except in the smallest jurisdictions, Australian Capital Territory, Northern Territory and Tasmania.

  2. Until the late 1970s, in most Australian states and territories, the magistracy was part of the public service. Many magistrates were promoted into the position from clerks of court and may not have been qualified for or admitted to legal practice. When the magistracy was separated from the public service and given improved security of tenure and other protections for judicial independence, admission to practice became a necessary qualification for appointment (Mack and Roach Anleu 2004, 2006a). These changes were part of an overall increase in the professionalisation of the magistracy (Roach Anleu and Mack 2008). By the time of the survey, only about one-fifth of magistrates had held positions as clerks of court (Mack and Roach Anleu 2005). There were very few, if any, women magistrates during the period when the magistracy was part of the public service, because there were few or no women clerks. Interestingly, women have entered the magistracy at a time when the professional status of the magistracy has been enhanced. However, the interaction of these developments is beyond the scope of this article.

  3. Because three-quarters of magistrates responding to the survey were male, reporting overall results will be shaped more by male than female responses, especially when they are different. As the number of female respondents was less than 100 (n = 44), where results are reported by gender, small percentage differences (less than 10 percentage points) cannot be regarded as demonstrating an observable difference.

  4. These charts were obtained by imposing numerical values on the level of satisfaction response categories and then averaging the sum of these responses for each of the facets of work. Satisfaction response categories and their imposed values were as follows: Very satisfied = 10, Satisfied = 5, Neutral = 0, Dissatisfied = −5, Very dissatisfied = −10. For example, taking the job facet ‘hours’, if three respondents were very satisfied and one was dissatisfied, this would give a value of 6.25 for ‘hours’ [(10 + 10 + 10 − 5)/4 = 6.25]. If two respondents were very satisfied and two were dissatisfied, this would give a value of 2.5 [(10 + 10 − 5 − 5)/4 = 2.5] and so on. This provides a measure of relative satisfaction for each facet of work. It also allows concise gender comparisons. Importantly, however, imposing values in this way can mask other findings. For example, if 100 respondents were very satisfied and 100 were very dissatisfied, this would give a value of 0. Because nearly all facets of work were rated positively, smaller positive values like ‘technical support’ could be argued to indicate relative dissatisfaction in comparison to a facet like ‘geographical location’ which had a much greater positive response (also see Hull and Harter 2005, p. 260).

  5. Scores for the seven of the eight job clusters—nature of the work, autonomy, opportunities, remuneration, administration, convenience/lifestyle and resources—were obtained by calculating the mean responses for the individual job facets that constitute each cluster. For example, for nature of the work, each of the values—Very satisfied, Satisfied, Neutral, Dissatisfied, Very dissatisfied—was calculated by obtaining the mean for each of the values for the four facets: overall work, diversity of the work, content of work and intellectual challenge. Scores for each of the eight clusters and the single facets are reported in the text but not in a table.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded initially by a University-Industry Research Collaborative Grant in 2001 with Flinders University and the Association of Australian Magistrates (AAM) as the partners and also received financial support from the Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration. It was funded by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project Grant (LP210306), 2002–2005, with AAM and all Chief Magistrates and their courts as industry partners and with support from Flinders University as the host institution. It is currently funded by an ARC Discovery Grant (DP0665198), 2006–2009. Thanks to Russell Brewer, Carolyn Corkindale, Elizabeth Edwards, Ruth Harris, Julie Henderson, Leigh Kennedy, Lisa Kennedy, Lilian Jacobs, Mary McKenna, Wendy Reimens, Rose Williams and David Wootton for research and administrative assistance.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, SA, 5001, Australia

    Sharyn Roach Anleu

  2. Law School, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, SA, 5001, Australia

    Kathy Mack

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Correspondence to Sharyn Roach Anleu.

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Roach Anleu, S., Mack, K. Gender, Judging and Job Satisfaction. Fem Leg Stud 17, 79–99 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-009-9111-z

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