Osgoode Hall, lower (centre buildings), is seen looking north west, from the 43rd floor of the Sheraton Hotel, located across Queen St. West.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
A Toronto lawyer is leading the charge to scrap a small room at an Ontario courthouse where so-called “lady barristers” can change into their robes and replace it with a unisex space.
Breanna Needham has launched a petition flagging the discrepancy between the women’s robing room at the Osgoode Hall courthouse, which is labelled “lady barristers” and holds 12 lockers, and the men’s, which has close to 70.
She says women make up roughly half of practising lawyers in Ontario and should be given as much space, literally and figuratively.
Needham says the robing rooms also serve as gathering places where lawyers network and talk about their work, and shutting women out of those discussions excludes them from mentoring and other potentially career-advancing connections.
She says a unisex space would include private rooms for those needing to make full wardrobe changes and a common lounge area, adding such systems are already in place in some courthouses. A unisex space would also better accommodate non-binary lawyers.
Lawyers are required to wear black, flowy robes to appear in court and the Law Society of Ontario says it is “generally bad form” to wear robes outside the courthouse.
As of this morning, the petition has close to 600 signatures.