Lawyers for Lawyers and the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) have submitted comments on the draft CEDAW General Recommendation No. 41 on dismantling gender stereotypes and unequal power relations. The submission calls on the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee) to explicitly address the impact of gender stereotypes on women lawyers and other women justice actors.
The submission draws on L4L’s longstanding engagement with women lawyers worldwide, including its recently launched Breaking Barriers: Women Lawyers Campaign, as well as interviews with women legal professionals, advocacy conducted on their behalf, and independent research.
Women lawyers play a vital role in ensuring access to justice, defending human rights, and representing individuals and communities facing discrimination and abuse. Yet across jurisdictions, women lawyers continue to face systemic barriers linked to entrenched gender stereotypes. These include discrimination in career progression, underrepresentation in senior positions, gender-based harassment, reprisals linked to their professional work, and stereotypes questioning their competence, authority, and legitimacy.
This submission highlights how these challenges are not merely workplace inequalities, but structural barriers that undermine the independence of the legal profession and restrict access to justice. Gender stereotyping within the legal profession and justice sector affects not only women lawyers themselves, but also the individuals and communities they represent.
L4L and IBAHRI therefore urge the Committee to strengthen the draft General Recommendation by explicitly recognising that gender stereotypes within legal and judicial institutions constitute barriers to women lawyers’ equal participation, professional independence, and career advancement. The submission further calls for recognition of the gender-specific risks faced by women lawyers, including harassment, intimidation, reprisals, and discriminatory treatment, particularly against those working on human rights and gender justice cases.
Among its recommendations, the submission calls for mandatory gender-sensitive training for justice sector actors, including judges, prosecutors, lawyers, and law enforcement officials, as well as measures to ensure safe, harassment-free, and enabling working environments within the legal profession. It also recommends the development of data collection initiatives on gender disparities and discriminatory practices affecting legal professionals, together with assessments aimed at identifying intersectional discrimination within the legal field.
The full submission is available here.
