"I am now a magistrate making decisions, but I was a victim."
Two decades ago, Rosie Johnson was living in a province of Papua New Guinea and working as a lawyer.
But at home, she was regularly beaten by her now ex-partner.
Bloodied and injured, she would go to the local police to report the assault.
"Every time I came to the police station … the police would ask me ‘who assaulted you?'," Magistrate Johnson tells ABC RN’s Law Report.
"I would say, ‘the father of my child'."
The response she received from the local police was 'Go back home, that's a domestic matter, go and resolve it between yourselves.'
Now the principal magistrate of the Port Moresby Family and Juvenile Court, and the acting president of the PNG Judicial Women's Association, Magistrate Johnson says this lived experience of domestic violence helps to inform her role as a magistrate.
"I deal with the complaints that come to court in a very sensitive way," she says.
"I see what I have gone through myself and so that puts me in a better position to see how they're suffering."
Living and working in a country where it is estimated that more than two-thirds of women experience family violence, Magistrate Johnson's experience is relevant to the work she carries out each day.
Battling gender inequality
Like many professions, the judicial system is dominated globally by men.
For instance, in the US, 34 per cent of state court judges are women. In the UK, that percentage is 39 per cent.
According to the Australian Women Association of Women Judges, the national average for women judges is between 28 - 37 per cent, except for the ACT where 55 per cent of judges are women.
In PNG, just 22 per cent of judges in PNG's higher courts are women, according to Magistrate Johnson.
Although around 40 per cent of New Zealand's judges are women, Justice Susan Glazebrook, of the New Zealand Supreme Court, says ratios in many parts of the world are still around 30 per cent.
"Now, when you're looking at it, that should be 50 per cent because women are 50 per cent of the community, and in many instances that is a far away dream," she says.
Justice Glazebrook believes that female judges bring an invaluable and diverse lived experience to the courtroom.
"This means that justice reflects the society that it serves," she says.
"But it also means that those people's experiences will come through in their decisions. So that they may well understand particular litigants better than somebody who hasn't had those same experiences."
Justice Glazebrook is the president of the International Association of Women Judges (IAWJ), advocating for gender equality on the bench.
"We're an organisation that's devoted to the rule of law, to gender equality and to equal access to justice for all," she explains.
"And when we speak about justice, we mean justice that has a proper effect on people's lives, rather than perhaps that black letter justice that looks more at what might be said to be the law."
Gender perspective in and out of the courtroom
Beyond the courtroom, female judges have helped to influence significant law reform around the world.
In 2013, two local female magistrates travelled across PNG consulting women impacted by domestic violence.
"When you're out there, you feel what other women are feeling. You put yourself in their shoes and so you're able to better deal with the situation and hear their cries and be able to push that agenda to where we are now," Magistrate Johnson says.
The outcome of that consultation was the introduction of the Family Protection Act in 2013.
Sometimes when judges hand down decisions, they not only affect the lives of the people who appear before them in court, they create a precedent that can change the law for all citizens
In 2021, Pakistani Justice Ayesha A. Malik drew international attention with her ruling that outlawed the draconian 'virginity test' when investigating rape cases in that country.
The ruling banned the controversial ‘two-finger test' that was used to determine a woman's level of sexual activity.
Justice Malik said the tests were "humiliating" and had "no forensic value".
According to the United Nations and World Health Organisation, the invasive 'tests' had been in practice in many parts of South Asia since the colonial era, and have been documented in at least 20 countries worldwide.
Robyn Tupman, judge of the District Court of New South Wales and secretary/treasurer of the IAWJ believes Justice Malik's ruling is a prime example of a female judge making a positive decision through a gendered perspective. It's a ruling that she believes may never have been made by a male equivalent.
"It was overturned, quite rightly, in the 21st century," says Justice Tupman. "It's absurd that [the ‘virginity test'] was still being applied."
Earlier this year, despite substantial backlash, Justice Malik was appointed the first woman to the Supreme Court of Pakistan. It was another considerable development for gender equality in that country.
Very real threats
While female judges around the world face the same sorts of discrimination, harassment and bullying met by women working in male-dominated environments everywhere — some face bigger, more dangerous obstacles.
"Not long ago, at the end of January, a woman judge … received a bullet in one of her thighs … [She] was on her way out of work, leaving her court," says Norah Jean-Francois, a judge in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where women make up just 11 per cent of judges.
Justice Jean-Francois says Haitian women judges support each other to avoid being entangled in the country's endemic corruption, but there is no way of completely avoiding widespread gang violence
"Gang violence is devastating in Haiti, and women judges and magistrates are not spared," she says.
Targeted violence against women
In some countries, violence against women judges is not random. It is targeted.
In Afghanistan, months before the fall of Kabul in August 2021, two women judges were shot dead on their way to work.
Judge Shakila Abawi Shigarf, the former president of the Afghan Women Judges Association, says even prior to Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan, she didn't feel safe doing her job.
"I always felt threatened, I always felt in danger," she says.
"People would follow [me to] my house, follow my family, and they would know where I am … they will threaten me."
When the Taliban took control of Kabul in August 2021, they immediately sacked all female judges.
Not long after that, Judge Shigarf's worst nightmares came true.
"When the Taliban took over, the worst thing and the most feared thing was, as a judge, to see when they opened all the prison doors," she says.
"Those were the people that we were afraid of and scared of, that they might find us and they might kidnap us or kill us."
With the help of the International Association of Women Judges, many female judges escaped Afghanistan. Judge Shigarf and 16 of her colleagues are now living safely in Australia.
Breaking down barriers
Female judges and magistrates face similar experiences around the globe, clearly some more extreme than others.
Yet Magistrate Johnson says there's a common scenario that plays out in courtrooms around the world.
"We still have these outdated yet strong traditions and misguided beliefs that still prevail in our national psyche, that women are not allowed to do certain jobs," she says.
She remains hopeful for change.
"It's slowly been accepted that women can be judges, women can be magistrates," she says.
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