As in political and economic decision-making, women are under-represented in professions that relate to the law, security and education. Whilst recognising the fact that gender balanced participation in these fields not only refers to the physical presence of men and women in decision-making, but also to the quality of participation, this gender bias ensures that women’s concerns are not adequately represented in these areas.
As highlighted in the section on Education & Communication, female teachers are largely concentrated at the primary and lower secondary levels. Few women reach the top administrative levels of educational institutions in spite of being a large majority of the teachers, whilst men fill most of the managerial and principal posts.
Of the countries with available information on the gender of their practising lawyers, the Czech Republic, with 46 per cent women, has the best gender balance, according to Women and Men in Europe and North America (ECE, 2000), which also covers the CIS countries. In four other countries, more than 30 per cent of lawyers are women: Spain, Hungary, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. In Iceland, female lawyers are rare, accounting for only 15 per cent of the profession. As there are as many women as men who graduate with a law degree a greater proportion of the female graduates are likely to use their legal skills in other occupations, such as politics, business and international affairs.
Judgeship is the only position of power and influence in which women have reached parity in a number of countries. In Ukraine, three quarters of judges are women, and women hold more than half the judgeships in Hungary, Czech Republic, Croatia and Spain, according to official statistics in 2000. Surprisingly, in Sweden, the country that tops all others in the percentage of women MPs and government officials at the ministerial level, only 10 per cent of judges are women according to the same data. In Estonia, women hold only 8 per cent of judgeships, and in Azerbaijan, all judges are men.
