GENEQUAL: The Political Economy of Gender and Inequality in the Spanish Judiciary.

Joan-Josep Vallbé, Carmen Ramírez-Folch, Bernat Coma-Puig

The genequal project aims to disentangle the effect of gender on judicial inequality, especially for victims of gender violence. Thus, this project addresses whether and in what ways female and male lower trial judges decide cases differently and how these differences interact with institutional design to shape judicial inequality in Spain. Paradoxically, female judges now represent 70% of trial court judges in Spain, and they hear on most restraining orders filed. Using detailed data from varied sources (most of the public), this project deploys a quantitative empirical strategy to address this puzzle and untangle the causes and consequences of judicial inequality. On the one hand, the literature has focused on the experience of U.S. courts and, on the other hand, on studying the effect of gender only in high courts. We contribute by exploring the impact of gender on judicial inequality in lower courts and a civil-law system, such as the case of Spain. Through this research, we hope to drive social impact in different manners. First, we hope to raise awareness of the importance of gender perspective in public policy and how it is vital to study the impact of institutions. Secondly, the empirical and adequate treatment of data we hope will help enrich the social debate entailing the problem of gender violence. And lastly, the evidence-based study of judicial behavior on gender-based violence will provide more tools (information and training) for actors involved in the gender-violence judicial cases, in particular, in addition to other gender-related issues.