It’s finally judgment day for leering lawyers

Just when you think we are finally reaching the tipping point of equal opportunity and gender blindness in the workplace comes a new and shocking report reminding us how our Sisyphean task has not yet been accomplished.

I don’t think I’m naive in being entirely shocked at the account by Joanna Hardy, the criminal barrister, of the appalling, unreconstructed Seventies mentality and atavistic behaviour of her male peers.

“Don’t behave like you’re on a stag-do,” she advised them in a Twitter post. “Don’t make repetitive jokes about breasts or skirts. Don’t communicate solely in innuendo.”

Is this really still going on in a profession where, according to the Law Society, more than 50 per cent of solicitors are female and, presumably, have breasts? Apparently so. Hardy, who is a rising star and features in The Legal 500 index, is speaking out in sheer frustration after she was chosen to give evidence to the Commons justice select committee hearing.

She cites male lawyers routinely asking the only female counsel to fetch the coffee, pour the water and organise dinners.

It’s the stuff of cliché, but horrifying cliché. Why would any man feel he had the right to conduct himself with such cavalier cockiness?

I’m at a loss. Really, I am. As a woman of a certain age, I’m spoiling for a fight. Think Liam Neeson, but without the racism.

I can give as good as I get – better. But 20 years ago, as I climbed the career ladder, I had far less confidence and would have been more easily cowed.

Do all men revert to lairy leeriness when they get together and are unchecked? I refuse to

believe it – but maybe I’m wrong. The swaggering arrogance Hardy describes makes me shudder. I’m familiar enough with the trope to know exactly what she’s talking about. Shades of Westminster spring to mind: listen to how female MPS must endure the same petty humiliations, demeaning remarks and juvenile references to their bodies.

What do these scenarios have in common? Yes, the perpetrators are male, but they are also privileged and, in the case of barristers, highly educated. So what makes men who ought to know better behave so crassly? Do they feel threatened? Angry? Does their need to put women down stem from inadequacy or hostility?

Hardy has very courageously lifted the lid on what goes on in and around our courts of law. I’d like to think quite a few men are feeling ashamed about their lack of respect – and the remainder are deeply uncomfortable about not calling out their colleagues.

Women can’t solve this problem. It needs a seismic shift in men’s attitudes, and soon; now we know what’s going on, the day of reckoning looms.