An Indian-origin woman has become the first non-white female judge to sit at the Old Bailey Court of London. Anuja Ravindra Dhir, who was advised to take up hairdressing by a teacher at her high school, is also the youngest circuit judge currently to sit at the court.
Speaking to the press this week the 49-year-old said that she is often mistaken for a witness or a defendant since she entered the legal profession.
“I remember going to a crown court out of London and the man at the gate didn’t believe I was a barrister. In the end I had to show him my wig and gown before they would actually let me into the building,” she said.
With 15 judges in the Old Bailey, only five of them are women, three of which were the most recent intake.
“I’m often asked if there is a glass ceiling. I think sometimes there are two ceilings – or no glass ceiling at all. There is one glass ceiling that’s in our minds, that’s what we think we can achieve so perhaps we impose our glass ceiling and that has happened to me several times… most clients did not want a young, Asian, Scottish female representing them, so that made it harder for me to build a client base,” she told the BBC.
Dhir was born in Dundee, Scotland, to Indian immigrant parents and studied at Harris Academy before studying English and Scots law at Dundee University. She subsequently won a Gray’s Inn scholarship in London, calling to the bar in 1989 where she practised for 23 years as both prosecutor and defence counsel. She recalls her dyslexia in school led her teachers to advice against dreaming of a legal career.
“I’m dyslexic so I find it difficult to read and write. And when I went to school in the 1970s in Scotland, women were not encouraged to aim high. When I first said to a teacher at school I wanted to go to university when I was older, she told me that I should aim a little lower and suggested I try hairdressing instead,” she recalls. Dhir donned her judge’s robes as a circuit judge at the Central Criminal Courts, known as at the Old Bailey, in London in February.
When she began her career as a lawyer in the 1980s, Anuja Ravindra Dhir knew she was in for a long struggle. Currently the Old Bailey's first non-white circuit judge, the 49 year old said she was often mistaken for a witness or a defendant.
"When I first said to a teacher at school, I wanted to go to university when I was older, she told me that I should aim a little lower and suggested I try hairdressing instead," she said.
"My daughter, it would never cross her mind being treated differently because she's a female or because she's not white, whereas in my generation we did. We were surprised when people didn't treat us differently. Not now, but when I came to the bar, I was not expecting to be treated like a white Oxbridge male at all."
She also spoke about times when initially clients refused to be represented as a young Asian Scottish female. One would think the treatment would change once she became a circuit judge, in February.
