The General Council of the Judicial Power is responsible for renewing dozens of senior judicial positions. Seats in the Supreme Court, in higher courts and in government bodies where men predominate, although, generally speaking, in Spain there are more women judges than men. The Equality Commission of the Superior Council of Judges has just approved a report in which it explains that, to respect national parity rules, at least two of the four presidencies of the Supreme Court awaiting renewal must be attributed to women so that, for the first time, the composition of one of the highest levels of the judicial pyramid is equal.
Official data show that for more than five years, the judiciary has had more women judges than men: 57.2% women and 42.8% men out of a total of 5,416 judges. But these same data reflect that the female majority is diluted when the positions of responsibility are distributed until reaching the Supreme Court, where there are 45 men and 12 women, where all the presidencies of its five chambers are in the hands of men and whose government Chamber It has two women against eight men.
The recent renewal of the CGPJ, after more than five years of preventing the People’s Party from doing so on time, gave the starting signal for the renewal of a total of 98 vacancies in the courts throughout the country, including 26 to the Supreme Court. . The processes are already underway and several candidates have begun to parade in the Council while the ground is being prepared to renew the governmental direction of the Court: the presidency of four of its five chambers and, by extension, of a significant part of its bedroom. . government.
The leadership of the different departments of the Supreme Court shows the lack of women in the Spanish judicial leadership. María Luisa Segoviano, today a constitutional magistrate, became in September 2020 the first and only woman to have chaired a chamber, the Social Chamber. These presidencies then sit in the government room of the Supreme Court. In this department there are currently two women: Susana Polo and, a few weeks ago, Isabel Perelló, the first woman to chair the Judicial Council and the Supreme Court.
The Judicial Council has launched the processes for the renewal of these four presidencies, but first requested an opinion from its Equality Commission to explain how the law on parity, in force since last summer, affects these appointments. The response from this organization, to which elDiario.es had access, is that at least two of the four presidencies at stake should go to women.
“The actual number of women at the highest levels of the judiciary remains extremely low,” explains this report which was taken up with the votes of deputies Lucía Avilés and Carlos Hugo Preciado. The application of the law on parity leads the Commission to conclude that “at least” two of the five presidencies must be awarded to women. Half of the vacant places, based on the recommendation made by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in 2003.
“This is not a simple recommendation”
The report, which must now be studied by the Qualification Commission responsible for reporting on appointments, explains that the parity law has modified the rules of the judiciary and is “clear and exhaustive” by requiring the “balanced presence of men and women » in the nominations. . discretionary like these. “This is not a simple recommendation, but a legal imperative,” recalls the document.
National and international regulations, from the Equality Act 2007 to the European Convention on Human Rights, the Constitution and resolutions of the Constitutional Court, point in this direction according to the report. Resorting to a generalizing criterion, which would lead to an average of women occupying government positions in central courts such as the Supreme Court or the National Court, would lead to “absurd results” and the right thing, adds the Equality Commission, is to examine case by case to avoid the formation of “niches”.
In the case of the Supreme Court, this analysis internally covers each judicial chamber but also its presidencies and, one level above, the governmental chamber. If two chamber presidencies were granted to two women, the situation within this governing body would also remain in terms of parity unprecedented in the history of the Supreme Court.
The coming months will see how the new General Council of the Judicial Power will meet the challenge of renewing nearly a hundred positions, while also enforcing the parity requirement of the law in force since last summer. At the Supreme Court alone, in addition to four chamber presidencies, a total of 26 vacant positions are awaiting renewal, which represents a third of its staff with chambers decimated by the losses of the last three years.
It is about the renewal of judicial leadership, both in central and territorial organizations, where the data shows the inequality in the presence of men and women despite the fact that, in the career, there are more women judges than of men. In provincial courts and superior courts, men occupy 78 chairs, compared to 26 for women.
