Hale: feminist stance ‘may have cost me top court job’
BARONESS HALE of Richmond claims she may have missed out on becoming Supreme Court president on her first attempt because she is a “feminist”.
The trailblazing former judge said her uncompromising stance on women’s rights may have put her at a disadvantage against her opponent, Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, who beat her to the position in 2012.
She was one of the two longest-serving Law Lords when she applied and was finally elected on her second attempt in 2017, becoming the first woman to head the UK’s highest court. She served until her retirement in 2020.
Her comments come after claims that she had a row with a fellow justice in the run-up to the contest and was seen as overly sensitive by colleagues.
Baroness Hale was said to have “taken offence” to a comment by Nicholas Wilson, a former Supreme Court Justice, which led to another colleague describing her as “touchy” and perhaps not a “suitable” president.
In an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, she was asked if people were right to cite her feminism as a potential reason she lost out on the job on her first attempt.
Baroness Hale replied: “They may have been. Or just the fact that I was a woman. Or that I was me! I am sure there will be things about me that not everybody likes. Possibly my propensity for speaking my mind when I want to. Sometimes my tactlessness.”
She said that her colleagues may have found her difficult to handle at times.
“I have made no secret of my belief that women are the equals of men in dignity and in rights, and that their experience of life is just as valid and important in shaping the law, as is the experience of men,” she said.
“I do not think that was always popular among certain sections of the media, and possibly not always popular among some of my colleagues.
“One of my colleagues I subsequently learned, because he published diaries, said that I was seen as having an agenda.
“I probably do have an agenda, which is to promote equality and diversity. [The] agenda which other people have, to preserve the status quo, is never seen as an agenda – although [it] equally is.”