Female lawyers and information, a gender and Context perspective

Abstract

The primary aim of this thesis is to examine female lawyers' relationships to information from different angles. The starting-point is that the legal information, retrieved from through different information sources, is not free from values and subjectivity. The commonly presumed objectivity of legal information is questioned, based on the fact that this kind of information has developed and changed historically in the context of, and in relation to, society. Another aim is to find out how the female lawyers experience their situation in a traditionally masculine working environment. Qualitative interviews have been carried out with seven female lawyers involving questions about their daily work about the sources that they are using. The findings show that the female lawyers in my investigation mainly use traditional sources of information. To some extent however they use IT to find information, although they regard the search by electronic sources as being more difficult and more demanding than the traditional search methods. They have no wish to change their information habits since they manage well with the traditional habits, which they have learnt in law school. Being a female in a traditionally masculine work context is not easy, but it has not held back any of my interviewees from continuing to practice the profession. The conclusion of my investigation is that there is no explicit consciousness of the fact that jurisprudence is unfair in regard of not taking any notice of gender perspectives.Uppsatsnivå: