A 'sexist' barrister has been fined and given an official reprimand for claiming that female lawyers were 'overemotional', 'hysterical' and 'intemperate'.
Feliks Kwiatkowski said he had witnessed a 'sea change' since increasing numbers of women had joined the legal profession.
Female lawyers, he argued, had a tendency to 'over-egg the pudding' leading to a 'ground shift' in the way work was approached.
But his comments have been condemned as 'reprehensible' by his professional regulator and he has been issued with a £500 fine.
A disciplinary hearing at the Bar Tribunals and Adjudication Service heard Mr Kwiatkowski made a series of sexist comments to a female barrister before they were due to face each other in court.
He described a witness statement, drafted and signed by a female solicitor, as that of a 'hysterical woman' before claiming this comment was 'just fact'.
The barrister who lives in Haywards Heath, West Sussex, said he had noticed a 'ground shift' as more women joined the legal profession because they often went 'overboard in a routine situation'.
The female barrister - referred to only as Person X - told how he had made the comments in a waiting room outside the courtroom at Worthing County Court, West Sussex, in November 2019.
The next month, she complained about what he had said to her to the Bar Standards Board.
She said: "I met Mr Kwiatkowski when he arrived at court at 10am... we initially discussed the case for around five to ten minutes.
"I made reference in the course of those discussions to my (female) instructing solicitor's witness statement. He then described the statement as that of a 'hysterical woman'.
"I said that he was free to make criticism of the tone of the statement but said that I felt when someone uses the phrase 'hysterical woman' to describe a legal professional they are in rather unpleasant territory.
"He explained to me that this was just fact. He then said the following: 'I have been practising since before this century. When more women joined the profession, the ground shifted.
"You do get stupid and unreasonable men in the profession, but the ground shifted - the number of incidents of over-egging the pudding and just going overboard in a routine situation multiplied'.
"I told him I was making a note of his comments (which I was) and that I found them sexist and inappropriate.
"He told me he was simply stating fact. He then began to tell me a story relating to a previous court case and I interrupted him, telling him I was happy to discuss the case but i had no interest in listening to examples to back up his claim that women were incompetent.
"He said that he was not calling women incompetent. I corrected the word to intemperate and he said 'yes, that was the word, intemperate'.
"He again explained that this was just fact, and he had a lot of experience of women being more unreasonable. He again began to tell me an example of women being unreasonable - and i told him again that I had no interest in listening to his attempts to justify sexist and offensive claims..."
Person X told the tribunal she moved away from Mr Kwiatkowski and sat next to another barrister - referred to as Witness A - because she found the experience 'unpleasant' and she 'felt shaken'.
She said she had heard inappropriate comments about women from other members of the Bar in the past, but she had 'never encountered someone who explained at such length and so calmly why they thought women were ill-suited to the legal profession'.
Witness A told Person X he would assist if the complaint reached a disciplinary tribunal, telling her 'This sort of thing should not happen from fellow members of the profession in 2019'.
At the tribunal, he said he overheard a 'robust conversation' in which Mr Kwiatkowski 'overstepped the mark'.
He added: "It went beyond a professional public disagreement between two members of the profession and strayed into one of a more hectoring or bullying nature."
In his statement to the tribunal, Mr Kwiatkowski said: "It is my opinion that the increase of female members in the solicitors' profession has led to a sea change in approaches to work.
"One feature of this change is, in my experience, that female solicitors and ancillary staff, particularly at entry level in affected areas of practice, can be overemotional and can over-egg the pudding, going overboard in routine.
"Whilst it is a generalisation, of course, I do find women tend to be more emotional than men. That is, I believe, a biological fact rather than an insult.
"I did not intend anything I said to sound sexist or otherwise offensive. As I have said, I am not a misogynist and i welcome women into both branches of the profession."
Jonathan Glasson QC, chairman of the tribunal, ruled Mr Kwiatkowski's actions were 'seriously reprehensible' and 'grave', amounting to professional misconduct.
He reprimanded him and ordered him to pay a £500 fine and £500 for legal costs.
