FINAL AS DELIVERED The Experience of Women in the Legal

The Experience of Women in the Legal Profession
Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C.
Chief Justice of Canada
to the Comité des avocates dans la profession du Barreau de Montréal
October 15, 2010
Montreal, Quebec
FINAL AS DELIVERED
The Experience of Women in the Legal Profession
Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C.
Chief Justice of Canada
to the Comité des avocates dans la profession du Barreau de Montréal
Montreal, Quebec
October 15, 2010
C’est un honneur et un plaisir de m’adresser à vous cet après-midi pour parler de mes
expériences en tant que femme de loi. On m’a invitée à offrir quelques réflexions sur ma
carrière de femme avocate et juge. Je dois commencer en parlant de celles qui m’ont précédée
et qui, par leurs inlassables efforts, ont contribué à permettre aux femmes de réaliser leur plein
potentiel, autant individuellement que collectivement, en tant que groupe constituant la moitié
de la société canadienne. C’est grâce à ces femmes que nous pouvons être ici aujourd’hui.
C'est un sujet qui a été beaucoup étudié et discuté. Malgré les milliers de mots qui ont
été dits et publiés sur ce sujet, il continue à susciter un vif intérêt. Je me suis demandé ce que
je pourrais ajouter de nouveau? Mais en lisant et en réfléchissant j'ai découvert que, même
au cours des derniers mois, la situation professionnelle des femmes a évolué. J'oserais même
dire que nous nous trouvons aujourd'hui au seuil d'une nouvelle époque de l'histoire des
femmes dans la profession juridique. Permettez-moi de m'expliquer.
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L'histoire des femmes dans la profession est très récente.
I mention only a few names. When we speak of women in the law, we are not speaking of
centuries, or even one century. We are speaking of decades, seven or so of them. Although Clara
Brett Martin became the first female member of the bar in the British Commonwealth she was the
only Canadian female to become a lawyer before the end of the nineteenth century. It was not until
the 1920's that the revolutionary notion surface that women could practice law gained more
widespread attention. In the west, where I grew up, Emily Murphy and the famous five appeared.
They went all the way to the Privy Council to secure the ruling that women were persons capable of
holding public office.
Içi au Québec, Annie MacDonald Langstaff. En 1914, elle devient la première femme
au Québec à obtenir un diplôme en droit. Malgré cela, on lui refuse la permission de se
présenter aux examens d’admission au Barreau. Elle est reléguée à des fonctions de
technicienne juridique. Quelques années plus tard, il y a le cas de Henrietta Bourque.
Titulaire d’un diplôme en droit civil décerné au Québec, elle se voit tout de même refuser
l’admission au Barreau du Québec, comme Annie Langstaff avant elle. Bien qu’elle obtienne
par la suite un diplôme en common law en Colombie-Britannique et soit admise au Barreau
de cette province, le ministère de la Justice refuse en 1939 de lui confier un poste d’avocate.
Elle ne peut aspirer qu’à un poste de commis juridique. Malgré les efforts herculéens qu’elle
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avait déployés, jamais le ministère de la Justice ne lui reconnaîtra officiellement le titre
d’avocate.
In fact, when Quebec finally granted women admission to the practice of law in 1941, it was
the last province in Canada to do so. That change allowed a new generation of female jurists to
emerge, starting with Elizabeth Monk, the first woman to be called to the Quebec Bar in 1942. In
her footsteps followed many others, including Réjane Laberge-Colas, the first woman judge
appointed to the Quebec Superior Court in 1969, Marie-Claire Kirkland, who in 1973, became the
first female judge on the Quebec Provincial Court, and Claire L’Heureux-Dubé, the first female
Quebec judge to be appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada. The influence of these women is
clear: the proportion of women lawyers escalated more rapidly in Quebec than anywhere else in
Canada-from 3% of lawyers in 1967 to 25.6% in 1987.1
I was born in 1943. The flavour of the times regarding women is captured by a document
I recently ran across, entitled “1943 Guide to Hiring Women”. The article was written for male
supervisors of women in the work force during World War II, and provides tips on getting more
efficiency out of women employees. It includes gems such as:
1.
Pick young married women. They usually have more of a sense of
responsibility than their unmarried sisters, they're less likely to be flirtatious, they
1
Fiona M. Kay, “Crossroads to Innovation and Diversity: The Careers of Women
Lawyers in Quebec” (2002) 47 McGill LJ. 699.
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need to work or they wouldn't be doing it, they still have the pep and interest to work
hard and to deal with public efficiently.
[...]
3.
General experience indicates that "husky" girls - those who are just a little on
the heavy side - are more even tempered and efficient then their underweight sisters.
4.
Retain a physician to give each woman you hire a special physical
examination - one covering female conditions. This step not only protects the
property against the possibilities of lawsuit, but reveals whether the employee-to-be
has any female weaknesses which would make her mentally or physically unfit for
the job.
[...]
6.
Give the female a definite day-long schedule of duties so that they'll keep
busy without bothering the management for instructions every few minutes.
Numerous properties say that women make excellent workers when they have their
jobs cut out for them, but that they lack initiative in finding work themselves.
[...]
8.
Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. You have
to make some allowances for feminine psychology. A girl has more confidence and
is more efficient if she can keep her hair tidied, apply fresh lipstick and wash her
hands several times a day.
We can laugh now at these 1943 guidelines, rife as they are with stereotypes. However, old
as it makes me seem, these stereotypes pretty much reflect the attitudes I experienced around as I was
growing up. The expectation was that most women would marry and remain within the home. Girls
might aspire to teaching, nursing or secretarial work, but usually only for a short time before they
married and perhaps part-time later in life when their children were grown.
Pour une raison ou pour une autre, je ne voulais pas me contenter de cela. J’ai grandi
sur une ferme dans la petite municipalité de Pincher Creek, en Alberta. Je ne connaissais pas
de femmes avocates; je n’avais pas de modèles. Les raisons exactes qui me faisaient aspirer
à davantage, même moi je ne les connaissais pas. Perhaps the most important factor in my
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ultimate choice of a legal career was a conviction that women, like men, should be able to choose
what they do with their lives. For me, that choice was the law.
There were few women in our law class — the class of 68 — and fewer still who went on
the make a career in law. What was it like in the early seventies for women seeking to practice law?
The answer is, "not entirely easy". On my first interview for articles, the senior lawyer asked at the
end of what I thought had been a good interview, "Why do you want to work?" I looked at him
dumbfounded. I had spent seven years of my life getting to this point and he asked me why I wanted
to work? Seeing my consternation, he explained,"Well, you're married, aren't you?" It dawned on
me that the expectation was that married women didn't work.
Things got better from there on. Yes, there was what we today call harassment – sexual
innuendos and jokes. Yes, there were people who still held circa-1943 attitudes about the feebler
sex. The few young women in law practice in our city were oddities, and as it always is with
oddities, the subject of intense speculation. But there were also people who judged me on the work
I produced, who taught me, mentored me, and helped me advance.
This is not to say that in my career I did not at times face hostility, doubt and outright
assertions that women were not cut out for the legal profession. I personally found that the best way
to deal with these attitudes was not to dwell on them, but to do my work to the best of my ability.
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Move on. Get the job done. The proof of a woman's ability to do the job would lie in the fact that
I did it.
Il a fallu attendre les années soixante-dix pour voir les femmes entrer en grand nombre
dans cette profession traditionnellement réservée aux hommes. Il s’agissait d’une petite
révolution pour les avocats qui allaient les employer et qui, au surplus, avaient besoin d’elles.
Je me rappelle les questions que se posaient presque ouvertement dans bien des cas, à cette
époque, des associés principaux perplexes. Les femmes étaient-elles vraiment capables de faire
ce travail difficile? Avaient-elles la vivacité d’esprit et la force morale nécessaires pour évoluer
dans l’univers rigoureux du droit? Et même si toutes ces possibles déficiences étaient
surmontées, est-ce qu’elles ne risquaient pas de renoncer à leur carrière au bout de deux ou
trois ans pour accomplir le véritable travail de la femme – s’occuper de la maison et élever une
famille?
The women who took up the practice of law in the seventies and eighties proved the sceptics
wrong. They could do the work. They could handle difficult clients. They did not crumble under
the pressure of complex settlement negotiations any more than did men. While some left for other
pursuits, like having family, the cause was more often the inflexible demands of law firms rather
than any inherent incompatibility between motherhood and practising law, as many women proved
by successfully combining both. Moreover, male partners discovered that dealing with female
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lawyers was remarkably similar to dealing with male lawyers; they proved more intent on getting
the job done than on office romance.
Malgré tout ça, les difficultés persistaient. Les vieux stéréotypes ont continué de causer
des problèmes à plusieurs.
Le rapport préparé par l'honorable Bertha Wilson pour
l'Association du Barreau canadien, en 1993, a mis en lumière quelques-uns des problèmes que
les femmes avaient rencontrés jusqu'à ce moment-là dans la profession. She summarized her
findings as painting "a negative at times bleak picture of a legal profession that regularly
discriminates against women in both direct and indirect ways". Elle a constaté que les femmes
étaient embauchées avec réticence, que les possibilités professionnelles qui s’offraient à elles
étaient limitées, qu’elles étaient moins susceptibles d’être promues ou de devenir associées -« partner » comme on dit en anglais, et, enfin, qu’elles gagnaient moins d'argent que leurs
collègues masculins. Elle a aussi observé que la profession tenait rarement compte des besoins
spécifiques des avocates ayant des enfants, ajoutant ainsi au fardeau de ces dernières. De plus,
elle a constaté que les femmes faisaient l’objet de harcèlement sexuel, et que les avocates de
race ou de couleur différente, subissaient la discrimination encore plus sévèrement que leurs
consoeurs.
I'm a realist, and I happen to believe that power being what it is, law firms, like large
corporations, will continue to be dominated by the male of the species for some time to come. Just
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last week, the Globe and Mail ran a series bemoaning the dearth of women-led corporations.2 One
might make the same comment regarding law: why is there such a dearth of women among the senior
partners of our law firms? However, I comfort myself with this thought: The mere fact that the end
of male hegemony is being discussed by responsible media to my mind marks an important turning
point in the story of women's advance from restricted domestic roles to full equality.
Let me conclude with a question I am often asked: why is it important to have women on the
bench? Or by extension, in law firms or the head offices of corporations? Let me offer three reasons.
The first reason is that having women in these positions sends the message to young women
seeking to imagine their life is that they have choice. They can be whatever they want to be; they
may contribute to society however they wish. Society and the law will no longer stand in their way,
as in the past.
The second reason is that women bring unique and valuable perspective to decision-making.
As the Globe and Mail reported, “having different perspectives around the table makes good
business sense – diverse teams support innovation and can help companies mirror and serve a diverse
2
Deborah Gillis, “More women in the workplace is good for business” Globe and Mail,
October 12, 2010, online:
<http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/women-in-power/more-women-in
-the-workplace-is-good-for-business/article1754106/>.
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marketplace.”3 Women comprise 51% of the population.
That 51% bring their particular
experiences and wisdom to the institutions on which they serve. The presence of women in our
boardrooms, law offices and courtrooms brings added value to the decision-making processes that
occur in these places. In a word, in enriches society.
Finally, the presence of women in the country’s highest institutions signals to other women
and to minorities that these institutions belong to them and welcome them. Let me share with you
the experience that brought this reality home to me.
À l’époque où j’étais juge de première instance, on m’a confié un après-midi une affaire
de divorce typique. Le couple à la barre s’était séparé et s’était entendu sur la garde des
enfants. La seule question à trancher consistait dans la répartition des biens familiaux et du
produit de la vente de la résidence familiale. L’épouse était représentée par une avocate. Le
sténographe était une femme, de même que le greffier. J’étais une femme. Le mari, qui se
représentait lui-même, était le seul homme dans la salle. Après que l’épouse eût présenté ses
arguments, j’ai invité le mari à faire de même. Il a commencé à le faire, d’une façon plutôt mal
assurée ai-je pensé. Je lui ai demandé de parler plus distinctement. Il m’a regardée d’un air
suppliant. « Franchement, votre honneur », est-il enfin parvenu à dire, « je me sens un peu
en minorité. » Je l’ai assuré qu’il n’avait pas à se faire de souci, que la justice rendue par mon
tribunal ne dépendrait pas du sexe des parties. Et pourtant, je n’ai pas pu m’empêcher par
3
Ibid.
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la suite de me demander combien de femmes, au cours des siècles, s’étaient retrouvées dans la
même situation que lui – si tant est qu’elles aient même été autorisées à prendre la parole –,
devant des auditoires entièrement composés d’hommes? Combien de femmes, à combien
d’occasions, ne s’étaient-elles pas senties en minorité, et pas seulement « un peu »?
So we need more women in high positions. But we still have a long way to go. Let me cite
the recent statistics.
-
women hold only 17% of corporate officer positions among Canada’s 500 largest
companies.4
-
22% of our Members of Parliament in Ottawa are women;
-
women represent approximately 34% of all practicing lawyers in Canada;5 and
-
41% of federally-appointed judges are women6
4
Deborah Gillis, "More women in the workplace is good for business" Globe and Mail,
October 12, 2010, online:
<http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/women-in-power/more-women-in
-the-workplace-is-good-for-business/article1754106/>.
5
Valerie Berenyi, “Scales tipped against women in law” Calgary Herald (February 1,
2009), online:
<http://www2.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/story.html?id=84d55e41-dce1-44c8-b669-3ae1d8
e6b678>.
6
Office of the Commissioner for Federal Judicial Affairs Canada, Number of Federal
Judges on the Bench as of September 1, 2010, online:
<http://www.fja.gc.ca/appointments-nominations/judges-juges-eng.html>.
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Law is doing better than other domains. But still the results are disappointing. The principal
reasons for these disappointing statistics are by now uncontroversial: failure to accommodate
women’s biological role as the mothers of the next generation; lack of mentoring — when did you
last hear of someone pushing a woman up the ladder; and a culture that pretends that a glass ceiling
isn’t, despite the fact you can see through it, still a ceiling.
So those are my reflections. Women have made great strides in the last century. They have
freedom hitherto unknown to women in the world’s history. Quand même, il reste un chemin à
faire. It is my hope that in the not-too-distant future, we can complete the journey and claim true
equality for women.
Je vous remercie de votre attention.
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