Women on the Bench – The role of women judges in fragile states

Women are entering courts as judges in increasing numbers all over the world. This is also true in post-conflict and transitioning countries. Judges are influential decision-makers and decide on a wide range of issues across public and private life that have concrete impact on individuals and society. Yet we know very little about women judges in fragile contexts with regards to how women become judges; the nature of the obstacles they encounter; how they experience their role as judges, their prospects for career progression, and social expectations around what women judges should deliver through their rulings.

On International Women’s Day, we will discuss issues related to gender, power and judging in fragile and conflict-affected contexts based on insights from the research project “Women on the Bench – The Role of Women Judges in Fragile States”, focusing on findings from Afghanistan, Uganda, Angola, Guatemala, and Haiti.

Join the webinar on zoom.

Pilar Domingo


is a Senior Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). Her areas of expertise are rule of law, judicial reform and access to justice, state-building in fragile situations and gender issues. She has conducted research on women judges in Uganda.

Torunn Wimpelmann
is a Senior Researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI), focusing on the intersections between gender, political and legal orders in contemporary Afghanistan. She has several years of field experience from Afghanistan as a political ethnographer.

Marianne Tøraasen
is a PhD candidate in Comparative Politics (University of Bergen) and Chr. Michelsen Institute. Her areas of expertise are women’s political and judicial representation, and she has spent several months doing fieldwork in Haiti.

Siri Gloppen
is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Bergen and senior research at Chr. Michelsen Institute. Gloppens
research focus is in the intersection between law and politics.

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