50 female judges to be appointed within 3 months, decision excludes female law school graduates

Women are to have a two-week window to apply for 40 to 50 mid-level positions within the State Council, but only those already employed by the State Lawsuits Authority and the Administrative Prosecution.  

Three sources — from the State Lawsuits Authority, the Administrative Prosecution Authority and the State Council — told Mada Masr on condition of anonymity that the move will see the vacancies filled in the next three months, and comes in response to this month’s presidential order for greater women’s representation in the justice system.

The new positions will be filled exclusively with women already selected to work in the State Lawsuits Authority and the Administrative Prosecution.

Female law school graduates remain barred from applying to entry-level positions, a barrier that the three sources and Omnia Gadallah, an advocate for women’s admission to judicial positions, all told Mada Masr was the real marker of equal access to employment.

The internal appointments “continue to deny female law school graduates equality with their male peers,” said Gadallah, founder of Her Honor Setting the Bar Initiative that works for women’s representation in the justice system.

Applicants to the entry-level position of assistant delegate in the State Council are accepted from law school graduates. Though there is no official ruling to prevent women from being accepted, in 2020, all 752 new appointees were chosen from the classes of 2014, 2015 and 2016 were male

The window for applications from the 2020 cohort opened on February 25, yet a Facebook post from the Her Honor Setting the Bar Initiative noted that female graduates across the country attempting to apply have received a message saying that their “national ID number is not valid for submission,” despite fulfilling all the requirements stipulated on the website.

The State Council said on March 14 that applications would be opened to female deputies or agents within the Administration Prosecution, or lawyers or deputies from within the State Lawsuits Authority. The State Council added that the female applicants must have achieved “very good” or “excellent” degrees in their undergraduate law qualification, have the equivalent of two postgraduate diplomas in both public and administrative law and must have no prior penalties or warnings. 

All three sources said that, at present, the internal hiring process is the only path to speed implementation of the presidential directive, suggesting it would take as many as six years for women to be hired for entry-level positions. 

The source working in the State Lawsuits Authority told Mada Masr that judicial bodies remain unwilling to hire women, noting that the State Council only started coordinating to pick 20-30 judges from the authority under the pressure of the recent presidential order.

The three judicial sources said that the decision to appoint 40-50 female judges is being seen as a trial period before the door is opened to female graduates. 

The hurry to make new internal hires in order to comply with the March presidential order appears to continue a trend of judicial bodies excluding women from standard hiring processes without direct intervention. 

Female law school graduates were first appointed to the State Council, the Supreme Constitutional Court and the regular courts by direct presidential appointment in 2007, with President Hosni Mubarak’s appointment of  Tahani al-Gabaly as the first female judge in Egypt. Thirty-one women who worked in administrative and state affairs bodies were then appointed to positions in judicial bodies in March 2007, 2008 and later in 2015 by the Supreme Judicial Council.