Daily Mail, Thursday, August 8, 2019 Page patronised at meetings by male
colleagues, with one even asked if
she knew how to use a laptop.
Leeds-based personal injury solici-
tor Lucy Mills said: ‘Lost count of
the amount of meetings I’ve attended
with my (male) boss only to be asked
if I’m the secretary.’
Miss Rollings, who practises at
Manchester’s leading 9 St John
Street chambers, specialises in per-
sonal injury and employment law.
The keen marathon-runner added in
her tweets: ‘For some reason (shock?),
I answered really politely and explained
I don’t like staying at home.’
While the term ‘kept woman’ histori-
cally refers to the mistress of a married
man, it is often used today to refer to a
wife or partner who is financially sup-
ported and does not need to work.
Speaking from her chambers, Miss
Rollings said that she is already
having to put up with ‘presumptions’
from male barristers that she will
soon be at home with children.
She said: ‘It is a conversation I had
hoped we had moved on from a long
time ago. Sadly, this was not the first
time a comment had been made
along these lines and, unfortunately,
I doubt it will be the last. By contin-
uing the conversation, we can shine
some light on the issue.’
Earlier this year, leading London-
based criminal barrister Joanna
Hardy highlighted sexist male law-yers in courtrooms ‘behaving like
they’re on a stag do’. Miss Hardy,
based at Red Lion Chambers, advised
her male colleagues: ‘If you are male
in a male-heavy case, don’t ask the
female counsel to fetch the coffee/
pour your water. Try to remember
their names. Don’t make repetitive
jokes about breasts or skirts.’
She added that saying ‘You’re
worse than my wife’ was ‘not an
acceptable way to conclude a debate
about complex legal provisions’.TWEET THAT SPARKED STORM
@amyvrollings
My (male) opponent today – on discovering I am
getting married this month – responded with,‘well it won’t be long until you are a kept
woman & you don’t need to do this’. Wow.doing it as a “hobby” part time
around child care took cases away
from proper full-timers (aka men)!’
Family barrister Amy Beddis
responded: ‘When I first came back
to the bar after mat[ernity] leave, I
was chatting to a male oppo[nent]
about my baby, who was 6 months
old, and his response, in horror, was
“your baby is barely sitting up and
you are back at work?” ’
A second family practitioner, Nadia
Tawfik, tweeted: ‘Not that long ago I
had an older male oppo[nent] who got
quite snarky and asked why I wasn’t
at home making a pie for my husband.
I’ve never made a pie in my life’.
An anonymous barrister and legal
commentator calling herself
CrimeGirl also tweeted: ‘When I was
pregnant, a solicitor told me that
they “thought I was a career woman”
and pointed at my stomach. I said I
am a career woman.’ Other female
lawyers told of being ignored andYou sexist dinosaurs!
Female lawyers’ fury after
young barrister reveals male
rival said she’d be a ‘kept
woman’ after her wedding
A BARRISTER hit out at
sexist male lawyers yesterday
after one commented that
she would be ‘a kept woman’
and wouldn’t need to work
once she was married.
In the latest broadside against
chauvinist attitudes in the
male-dominated profession,
Amy Rollings, 31, said she was
stunned after the remark by her
barrister opponent during a
county court case.
After hearing that she was due
to get married this month, he said:
‘Well it won’t be long until you are
a kept woman and you won’t need
to do this.’ After winning the case,
Miss Rollings took to Twitter to
express her anger and joked: ‘I’ve
just been killing time all these years
until I found a husband!’
Her experience provoked a slew of
similar accounts by other lawyers
who had suffered at the hands of
sexist ‘dinosaurs’.
Leading criminal barrister Eleanor
Mawrey, of London’s 9 Gough Square
chambers, replied: ‘I feel your pain!
Last year a male barrister told me
that why it’s hard at the crim[inal]
bar was because women who were‘Why aren’t you at
home making a pie?’
By James Tozer
and Tim Stewart‘This was not
the first time’Barrister Amy Rollings: Challenging chauvinist attitudeshas increased over the last 2
months. Character of bread has
now changed. Not as good.’
She proceeded to complain to
the customer service desk for the
next 15 minutes before eventually
being granted a refund on the
800g loaf last week, according to
shoppers who were watching on.
One witness said: ‘I don’t think
you could get a more middle-class
complaint if you tried. I’ve never
seen anyone take such a firm viewon seeds. The poor customer
service worker had to hear the
history of her bread-buying.
‘She had apparently been buying
that loaf for years. I’m quite
bemused by the fact she ate half of
it just to be sure. It couldn’t be a
more fitting Waitrose complaint.’
Jackson’s marketing manager
Deborah Dyson said: ‘The only
change we’ve made to our bread
recently is to remove palm oil and
this has been at the request of our
customers, but this hasn’t affected
our bread in the slightest and
there’s definitely no more seeds
going into our seeded bloomer.’
She added that she was ‘sorry
to hear we’ve had an unhappy
customer’ and suggested that
Jackson’s also offers a white and a
brown bloomer that ‘she might
like to try instead’. Waitrose
declined to comment.Shopper’s Waitrose rant: There
are too many seeds on my loaf
By Henry GoodwinAS Middle England’s supermarket
of choice, Waitrose must go above
and beyond to meet its customers’
exacting standards.
One store, however, has fallen
woefully below par in the eyes of
a shopper who felt compelled
to return a luxury loaf of bread
because its ‘character’ had been
ruined by ‘too many seeds’.
The disgruntled woman, said to
be in her 50s, bought the £1.
Jackson’s seeded bloomer from
her local Waitrose in Cirencester,
Gloucestershire.
But hours later she was back at
the till with the half-eaten loaf and
a handwritten note to lodge what
onlookers called ‘the most middle-
class’ and ‘fitting’ Waitrose
complaint ever.
The note read: ‘Quantity of seeds‘Ruined’: A Jackson’s seeded
bloomer as sold in WaitroseNewly appointed Supreme Court
justice Lady Arden is among those
who have recently spoken about how
women have been guided away from
the most senior jobs.
And Lord Burnett of Maldon,
the Lord Chief Justice, has also
warned that sexism is deterring
able young women from pursuing
careers in the law.
Last November, City law firm Reed
Smith sacked a partner following
alleged sexual harassment of junior
female lawyers. Shortly afterwards
another City firm confirmed that it
had sacked a partner who was sus-
pended after being seen viewing por-
nography on his office computer.VПОДГОТОВИЛА
ГРУППА"What's News"
VK.COM/WSNWS