The number of women barristers appearing in UK Supreme Court cases has not changed for 17 years, highlighting the struggle to improve gender diversity at the top of the legal industry.
Female barristers made up 23 per cent of advocates presenting cases at the UK’s highest court in 2025, up from 21 per cent in 2024 but down on 2009, when it was created, according to a Financial Times analysis.
The 23 per cent average over the lifetime of the court fell to below 15 per cent for female King’s Counsels, or KCs, the elite kitemark given to the most senior advocates, showing that even fewer women are leading cases in the top court. Almost all Supreme Court cases are run by KCs.
About 40 per cent of barristers in England this year were women, up from 32 per cent two decades ago, according to the Bar Standards Board, a regulatory body.
But the FT data, based on analysis of Supreme Court judgments, highlights a lack of progress for female advocates in winning the most prestigious work, with the number of women barristers in the court in any one year never exceeding 26 per cent.
Karon Monaghan KC, who has appeared before the top bench of judges in 20 cases, the most of any woman, said: “If you do a lot of work in the Supreme Court then people want you more because you’re comfortable in that venue.”
“This can compound the disadvantage and lack of representation for women,” said the barrister, who specialises in equality and human rights law. The “very male” culture that still exists at the Bar needs to change in order to attract more women, she added.
Unlike the High Court, clients cannot automatically take a case to the Supreme Court, whose rulings interpret law in ways that can have a far-reaching impact on how industries operate and people behave in society.
The court only hears cases that it believes have an arguable point of law on an issue that is of public importance. As such, even some of the best practitioners may never or rarely appear.
Still, of the more than 2,600 barristers who have been involved in cases at the top court since 2009, fewer than 700 were women, according to the FT analysis.
As the most frequent litigant in the court, the government can have a big impact on representation. Sir James Eadie KC, who as first treasury counsel is the government’s go-to advocate for civil litigation, has appeared in the Supreme Court on 89 cases — the most of any barrister.
Last month Lord Richard Hermer, attorney-general for England and Wales since Labour won power in July 2024, created a new panel of six KCs to support Eadie, three of whom are women.
“It’s important to ensure the counsel we instruct reflects the diversity of the citizens we serve, leading to different experiences and better outcomes,” Hermer said. “We’ve not always got this right, but I have been determined to change this.”
Anneliese Day KC, a commercial silk at one of Britain’s top chambers, led a case in the court for the first time in 2024. She said a preference for men from some clients and instructing solicitors was still affecting selection.
“We need to think about initiatives to change unconscious perceptions when solicitors and clients are thinking about who would be the best advocate to argue a case,” she said.
“Otherwise, it becomes a catch-22 where a barrister can’t get on to a Supreme Court case because they’ve never done one.”
The dominant presence of men in the court was highlighted in October when women barristers made up the entire front row, prompting president Lord Robert Reed to remark it was the first time he had seen such a sight.
In a statement, the Supreme Court, which has no role in deciding which barristers appear in cases, said it “actively supports diversity and inclusion within the legal profession”.
“Progress is being made but there’s no doubt that we need to work collectively across the judiciary and legal profession to accelerate the pace of change,” it said.
Long hours and the interruption of family life, which leads many female barristers to leave the Bar, have been cited as factors behind fewer women making it to the top echelons.
Reed told the profession in 2024 that the court expected to hear from junior counsel more frequently in an effort to increase experience and also diversity.
A similar direction was given for lower courts in 2023, which highlighted the underrepresentation of women as one of the reasons such a direction was needed.
“There is, of course, no difference between the quality of advocacy according to gender,” said Lord Jonathan Sumption, a Supreme Court judge between 2012 and 2018. “However, that does not eliminate the societal factors that continue to be more of an obstacle for women.”
The lack of female barristers working on the top cases can also have a knock-on effect on diversity within the judiciary, which mostly selects the next crop of judges from the Bar.
The Supreme Court, whose current 12-strong bench includes two women, has had five female judges out of a total of 33 since 2009. One of them, Baroness Brenda Hale, led the court from 2017 until her retirement in 2020, when Reed became president.
Laurence Rabinowitz KC, one of the UK’s most high-profile barristers who has appeared in the Supreme Court in numerous cases, said more must be done to increase the rate of change.
“[The situation] is obviously disappointing,” he said. “It is plain that there is an issue here and that despite the efforts, both of the judiciary to encourage greater female representation and indeed the Bar itself, we haven’t yet got to where we need to get to.”
Methodology
The analysis covers all cases published on the UK Supreme Court website with a judgment given as at the end of October 2025.
The names of barristers were extracted using a mixture of computational techniques. The gender of barristers was determined based on the pronouns and titles used in their professional biographies and other public records using an AI agent.
These processes were validated by checking samples. For the name extraction, the FT evaluated 668 names. For the gender determination process, a sample of 200 barristers was used. In both cases there were zero errors.