Associate Professor Ramona Vijeyarasa is the Program Head of the UTS Juris Doctor program and a global expert on gender equality and the law. This International Women’s Day, she shares her thoughts on being a woman of colour in the legal profession and the role of the law in protecting and advancing women’s rights.
You’ve worked all over the world as a lawyer specialising in women’s rights. Why are you so passionate about gender equality as it relates to the law?
Gender inequality is one of the greatest challenges that we face as a world right now. If we don’t address it, it will exacerbate but also be made worse by other challenges like climate change and global conflict. As a woman myself and the child of migrants, women’s rights issues are very real for me. During my time as an international human rights lawyer, I met many women from all regions of the world and learnt that whether you’re a Brazilian woman living in a slum, a farmer in Liberia or you live in the floating villages of Cambodia, the law rarely works the way it’s meant to.
You’ve seen firsthand many of the challenges and opportunities of a career in the law. What sort of barriers do women face in this profession, and how can they be overcome?
The legal profession can be challenging for a woman to work in. There’s an interesting dynamic where young women make up the majority of law graduates across the country, but women aren’t making it in sufficient numbers to senior leadership. As in other sectors, I think mentoring of younger women by senior women is fundamental. As we continue to push for systemic change, I think there has been some progress to make the profession more equal. That’s worth celebrating.
You’re the Chief Investigator behind the Gender Legislative Index, a world-first tool that drives change towards more gender equitable laws. How does the Index address the challenge of laws that don’t work for women?
The Gender Legislative Index uses both human evaluations and machine learning to provide evidence-based insights into how different laws work for or against women’s interests and identify opportunities for law reform. This tool helped Tasmania to establish Australia’s first-ever parliamentary Gender and Equality Audit Committee, which is currently auditing draft legislation to advance the needs and interests of Tasmanian women. I’m now studying these gender-focused audit committees across the world and asking whether they offer the tools for women’s lived experiences to come alive in legislation, and if not, how we can make them more effective.
This idea of the law as a tool for social justice is a shared value across the Faculty of Law and within the Juris Doctor. How does this positively impact the lives of women?
The whole faculty has a deep commitment to social justice, and that includes the rights of a diversity of women, particularly those who are less privileged. Within the Juris Doctor specifically, so many of our teaching staff are genuinely changing the way the law is practised in Australia. Jane Wangmann has been fundamental in increasing community understanding of coercive control in her work on domestic and family violence, and Linda Steele has been really influential in the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with a Disability. Laurie Berg’s work has been at the centre of uncovering wage theft in Australia, which heavily impacts migrants. Nicole Watson and Marcelle Burns are some of the most vocal and respected First Nations activists in the country. Issues of injustice impact people from every life path, including – but not only – women. We’re really conscious of the need to bring this gendered and intersectional lens to our research and teaching.
The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is ‘Inspiring Inclusion’. How do those values come to life within the Juris Doctor?
There’s a lot of support for students generally. Our Juris Doctor cohort is around 65% women, so women naturally benefit from everything on offer. That includes our JD Plus program, which is the ‘plus’ of doing a JD at UTS. It’s the Dean’s welcome events, it’s legal writing and legal research masterclasses. It’s also a whole series of careers and networking events where we connect students with our Juris Doctor alumni who offer professional connections and insights into the realities of a legal career.
We also have first-year mentoring programs for high-achieving students and a new mentoring program for First Nations students and students on humanitarian visas, and students have been invited to get involved with the industry-wide Diverse Women in Law initiative. As a faculty, we need to live our values around supporting a diversity of students within the profession.
Read more about Associate Professor Ramona Vijeyarasa and the Gender Legislative Index (GLI): Better laws for women may be just seven questions away