Youth Participate: the situation of women lawyers in the Gaza bar association

“The reality of women lawyers in the bar association in Gaza” is what trainees Mariam Abu Amra and Hadeel Jad addressed in their research paper during the training “Writing and intellectual-creativity skills”, aimed at producing a set of research papers discussing community issues — within the project “Strengthening the democratic participation of Palestinian youth”, implemented by Pal-Think for Strategic Studies with funding from the government of Canada. The two young women discussed the paper's axes during the second episode of the radio programme “Youth Participates” on Alwan radio from Gaza, which began with a telephone intervention by the lawyer and legal researcher Abdullah Sharshara, who described the reality of women lawyers' participation in the bar association and the professions related to the judiciary and the public prosecution as very weak — relying on the indicators issued by the Central Bureau of Statistics and the bar association. He added that the number of women lawyers registered in the lawyers' register approaches 549, of whom only 336 are practising, while the number of trainee women lawyers reaches 431 — against several times these numbers among males.

Regarding the legal professions in general, Sharshara said the number of judges in the Gaza Strip has reached 76, of whom only two are women; in the public prosecution there are three women holding the post of deputy prosecutor. He noted the problem is not confined to the Gaza Strip but exists across all Palestine, where the ratio among law graduates divides into 73% males against 27% females.

She noted that the causes of this weak participation are many — among them the stereotyped image in a society that does not accept women's work in the legal profession, an indirect cause; the absence of a women's quota guaranteeing women lawyers' participation at fixed rates in the membership of the bar association's council within the regulations and laws governing the association's work; the social and cultural obstacles that weaken women's participation; alongside certain professional problems that hamper the work of lawyers, men and women alike.

Returning to the research paper, Mariam Abu Amra noted that their choice of topic suited her university specialisation and the study of the future awaiting her regarding membership in the Palestinian bar association — adding that the figures in the paper point to the meagreness of participation in the association's structures, especially its board. She explained that her colleague in preparing the paper, Hadeel, studies journalism, which helps in working to solve the problem and change the society's stereotyped image — especially as the problem concerns the bar association, the body responsible for realising justice and vindicating the wronged, and therefore the body most fit to apply equality between men and women.

According to Hadeel Jad, the problem the paper addresses, and the questions it seeks to answer, is the proportional gap between male and female lawyers in their association and its causes — from which springs the question: “How far are women lawyers represented in the bar association in Palestine?”, “Does the association observe gender in the council elections and the association's internal regulations, what are the causes behind the low share of women lawyers in the association, and accordingly how can women's participation in syndicate work be supported?” She explained that the paper aims to set out and discuss the reality of women lawyers in the association across the period between 2003 and 2019 — especially as in 2003 the first woman was elected a member of the association's council — and to diagnose the causes and obstacles that prevent the woman lawyer being elected equally with the man lawyer to the association's council, up to the post of president.

On the paper's principal axes, Abu Amra added that three headings led the paper. First, women's representation in the bar association, which addressed the association's bodies — “the general assembly, comprising all practising lawyers, who may elect the board members; the association's council of 15 elected members; and committees that carry out the work within the association” — the study showing a great lowness in women's participation and representation in all the foregoing bodies. The second heading, “Women lawyers in the association's elections from 2003 to 2019”, set out how the electoral process ran, the difficulties it faced, and its results, which produced one woman reaching board membership. In the third heading we laid down proposed solutions for strengthening women's participation in syndicate work: we spoke of the extent of gender observance in Palestine's laws — the Palestinian Basic Law, the law regulating the legal profession No. 3 of 1999, and the association's internal regulations — and found no distinction between man and woman in any text of the law, yet it laid down no text sufficiently strengthening women's participation in syndicate representation. We also discussed the CEDAW convention, focusing on the texts that set out women's right to work, and concluded the research by laying down the results and recommendations.