Raising the bar: gender and the careers of women barristers in Northern Ireland

The challenges facing women in the solicitor profession and the judiciary are well rehearsed. However, there is a comparative lack of research considering the particular context of the barrister profession, particularly in Northern Ireland.

Moreover, this extant research considering gender and the legal profession, as with similar research in other professional contexts, tends to employ gender as a variable to facilitate comparison. This thesis will depart from this trend, instead employing gender as a lens of analysis within a critical feminist framework. Through so doing, this research is able to transcend the individual woman as a unit of analysis and illuminate the effect of professional context. <br><br>This thesis illustrates how gender practices serve to produce and maintain gendered horizontal and vertical segregation within the barrister profession in Northern Ireland.