Chambers’ unfit policies for dealing with sexual harassment to be overhauled by Bar Council

The Bar Council will respond to claims that many barristers’ sets’ policies for dealing with sexual harassment are not fit for purpose by producing new guidelines to which chambers must adapt.  

As Legal Futures reports, many chambers’ existing policies for dealing with harassment have been found to be “wholly ineffective” because either “victims don’t have confidence in those handling complaints” or don’t know how to access the complaints procedure – or even if it exists.

The Bar Council’s equality and diversity retention panel and barristers Sophie Garner and Esther Gamble, chair and vice-chair respectively of the Midland Circuit Women’s Forum, have been working together to develop a comprehensive policy model for preventing and calling out harassment. This will include step-by-step guidance on what should be done if a complaint is raised, as well as interactive training to make barristers more aware of the issues and able to support their colleagues, as well as educate advocates in what constitutes inappropriate behaviour.

In an article for Counsel magazine, Garner and Gamble made a stark assessment of the problem. They wrote: “The overarching aim behind the redesign of the Bar Council guidance was to provide practical, realistic solutions, together with support to tackle what seems to be – even in 2018 – an intractable problem in our profession.

“Sexual harassment is not just a problem in its own right, but often goes hand in hand with a pattern of deep-seated discriminatory and outmoded attitudes towards women within chambers.

“For example, overly paternalistic or jolly avuncular comments to a female junior colleague might seem innocuous, but the impact can be to infantilise the recipient in their own and others’ eyes. This can then lead to assumptions being made about the recipient’s competence and ‘ability to cope’ by colleagues and clerks alike – potentially impacting, in turn, on work distribution, which can amount to direct discrimination.”

“Why is a comment that would quite reasonably raise a laugh down the pub with your mates inappropriate at a circuit dinner? Why is it that making a casual ‘jokey’ remark in front of her colleagues may leave a usually strong woman feeling shaken, intimidated and isolated?

“What about a comment to a younger female opponent, at the door of the court, about how ‘nice’ her outfit looks? This may seem innocuous but perhaps think of it this way: would you make the same comment, in the same way, about a male opponent the same age as yourself? Would you look him up and down, pausing in the chest or thigh region for that tell-tale nanosecond… and then make a ‘compliment’ about the way he looks? Such comments could leave a junior opponent flustered, tongue-tied and humiliated.”