Emma Ritch Women’s Rights Seminar
International Law LLM student Beste Yasav shares her reflections on participating in the School of Law’s recent ‘Emma Ritch Women’s Rights Seminar’, which took place on 29 October.
Emma Ritch was an inspiring woman, who achieved some incredible things regarding her work in gender equality. She was a Scottish women’s rights campaigner, and a passionate feminist who graduated from University of Glasgow. Emma was the executive director of Engender, Scotland’s feminist policy and advocacy organisation. Prior to her time at Engender, Emma led Close the Gap. She also served as a Board member for several organisations including Rape Crisis Scotland and the Human Rights Consortium Scotland.
Following her legacy, The Emma Ritch Law Clinic has been established in the University of Glasgow, providing independent legal representation to complainers in sexual violence cases. The Clinic is Co-Directed by Eamon Keane, who acts as Principal Solicitor, Professor Jacqueline Kinghan and Professor Nicole Busby. The 2023/24 was the pilot year of the Clinic, and in the academic year 2024/25, it was incorporated in the degree programme as an Honours course for students to have the opportunity to work in the Clinic and undertake supervised legal casework.
On Tuesday, 29th October, I had the privilege to attend the Emma Ritch Women’s Rights Seminar. Emma Ritch’s mother, husband, and niece were also present in this seminar, and we are very grateful for their support and attendance to this lovely event to honour Emma and all her influential work. I am incredibly grateful to be a part of such an event, as an aspiring LLM student who wants to work in the women’s rights and gender equality sector, as Emma once did so passionately.
During the seminar, we had the opportunity to hear all about the Emma Ritch Law Clinic’s incredible work, meet some truly inspiring feminists, and present the work we have undertaken in the Honours course Women, Law and Society last year, alongside my friends.
The Seminar started with an introduction from Professor Maria Fletcher on GO Justice, and followed by Professor Nicole Busby’s presentation on working with the women’s sector in Scotland. Then, we moved on to the presentation on the Emma Ritch Law Clinic by Eamon Keane, Professor Jacqueline Kinghan, and the students. Next up, we had the presentations on writing feminist judgments by Professor Nicole Busby, my friends and I, the students from Women, Law & Society class 2024. Lastly, following the amazing Q&A sessions after all the presentations, we heard from Professor Jacqueline Kinghan about the opportunities to work with GO Justice. We concluded the seminar with a drinks reception, where we got the chance to meet and chat with all the amazing feminists in the room.
It was inspiring to hear all about the work carried out by the Emma Ritch Law Clinic, and how they recently intervened in a Supreme Court case to raise awareness of complainers' rights in sexual violence cases. They talked about how the criminal justice system is failing to treat the survivors with the respect and dignity they deserve. They also emphasised that legal advice and representation can make a difference, and talked about how trauma-informed lawyering and clinical legal education play a major role in this. The students talked about their own experiences with working in the clinic and how it sometimes can be a ‘productive discomfort’ to tackle such issues, considering the possibilities and the limitations of law.
Moreover, it was an honour to present our feminist judgments in such an incredible event, with a room full of very successful and inspiring feminists that we admire. We have written these feminist judgments as a part of our assessment in the Honours course Women, Law and Society last year. This course is convened by Professor Nicole Busby, and the teaching team includes Dr Rachel McPherson, Dr Catriona Cannon, Felicity Belton. Taking this course and writing this assessment was one of the most unique and interesting things I have done in my four years in Law School. It was a very interesting, and sometimes challenging, task to rewrite the judgment on a case, adopting a more feminist perspective, whilst using the same legal instruments and the precedents that were used at the time of the original case, and sticking to the facts without adding or removing anything.
Although the task had its limitations as mentioned, it mainly aimed to have a ‘feminist’ judgment, without necessarily changing the outcome. Our presentations focused on three specific cases: Sorrell v Sorrell (2006), Walker v Procurator Fiscal (Dunoon) [2022], Royal Mencap Society v Tomlinson-Blake [2021]; all about different areas of law, and different inequalities faced by women. As discussed in our presentations, we tried to give the female subjects of the cases a voice in our feminist judgments, and consider the lived experiences of women, together with the wider socio-economic context.
We specifically focused on the language and tone used in the cases, the unpaid or under-paid and undervalued care work mostly undertaken by women, legal (mis-)interpretations of the instruments specifically drafted to tackle gender-based violence, the societal gender norms and stereotypes, including but not limited to the responsibilities of the women in the household and the different expectations from mothers and fathers, and lastly, the treatment of the female subject in the cases. As mentioned by our lecturers as well, it was an emotional, but also a cathartic experience to write these judgments. It was empowering and hopeful to see that there are ways to achieve equality and see progress.
Following this inspiring seminar and the drinks reception, we had the opportunity to attend Professor Linda Mulcahy’s Lecture on ‘The Right to Legal Knowledge: Epistemic injustice in a post democratic age’ and to honour Madge Easton Anderson, the first woman lawyer in the UK and graduate of University of Glasgow. This was a lecture hosted by the Women in Law Project, in collaboration with the Glasgow Open (GO) Justice Centre. Professor Linda Mulcahy is Statutory Professor of Socio-Legal Studies, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford and Director of the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. The fascinating lecture by this amazing professor was mainly about the epistemic injustice. She discussed this injustice through the NHS complaints system and how it continuously excludes certain groups of people by being very complex and inaccessible. She also mentioned the impact of the machines/technology and the new barriers they created for the digitally disadvantaged. We talked about how the system now requires legal capacity and digital capacity to submit a complaint, the complex language and jargon used in the relevant websites, the complicated hyperlinks that take you everywhere and nowhere, and the amount of incoherent information scattered around the internet. The lecture reflected the importance of the public legal education and how the lack of it can be used to disregard certain voices, and the need to hold account the ones with power and the epistemic advantage they have.
To conclude, both the seminar and the lecture were very inspiring and a privilege to attend. We have met some wonderful people from incredible organisations including Engender, Rape Crisis Scotland, Close the Gap, and Shelter Scotland. It was an honour to be a part of this event, listening to all the amazing work in the women’s sector, presenting in front of all those impressive people, and meeting some of the people we look up to. The event motivated me even more to carry out my passion to legal practice, and I am looking forward to working in this sector, hopefully with all these inspirational feminists in the future.
~ Beste Yasav (International Law LLM student; Common Law LLB 2024)
