Analyze law as a masculinized social space.

Claudia Valeria Zúñiga
Doctoral student in Social Sciences at the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo.

I am a lawyer, but I am currently studying for a PhD in Social Sciences at the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo and as a researcher I was interested in investigating the place that women occupy in the different social spaces where law is practiced, but especially if they do it differently from their male counterparts.

The professional practice of lawyers is very broad, from private litigation, public defense, as judges, public officials, to teaching. But historically, law has been a space of and for men; not only that, laws and legal norms were written and applied by men.

However, the struggle of women for equality has allowed us to occupy more and more positions in public spaces. Although, in the legal-institutional field, my research question is, has our presence changed at all the practice of this profession in the legal field, can we say that Law is now a feminized space? Or perhaps, could we say that women immersed in this field have acquired masculine conditions or characteristics in order to be accepted?

My research project is focused on analyzing particularly the Superior Court of Justice of the State of Hidalgo because it is a social space of Law where mostly women work even occupying important positions the Presidency that in three periods has been occupied by Alma Carolina Viggiano Austria from 2006 to 2009, Blanca Sánchez Martínez in 2016 and currently is the Magistrate Yanet Herrera Meneses.

According to information published in its digital portal, from the highest places or hierarchical positions of major decision making, work around 22 women and only 8 men. An uncommon situation in the state and national history.

My approach to the Judiciary in the state of Hidalgo to analyze the presence of women in the practice of law is based on the concept of social space, that is, any environment or profession, place or situation where we live together.

What is the purpose of analyzing a specific social reality? Looking at a given condition helps us to understand it in order to even propose changes. That is why doing scientific research in some area or aspect of human life can be a starting point to try to change reality in a sustained way, based on inquiries and not on personal assumptions or beliefs based only on personal experience.

A research can be elaborated from different points of view and I chose to do it from Sociology, a science that offers many theoretical tools and I opted for the so-called Economy of Social Practices of the French author Pierre Bourdieu.

This theory analyzes how we human beings share ourselves considering aspects of life that we do not directly control, such as institutions, laws or politics; as well as aspects in which we have more control, for example, our opinions, our vision of the world or our personal choices.

To gather information, I entered two of the courts of the state Superior Court of Justice and most of the positions are occupied by women. In the First Mercantile Court of Pachuca there are 11 positions and nine are occupied by women, including the judge. In the First Mercantile Court of Tula, out of 13 workers, eight are women.

In the first informal contact with Key Informants (KIs) of the research, I was able to note that there is no significant differentiation in the perception of the decision-making position occupied by a woman; however, in the words of some female court workers, there is a double or triple workday when working as professionals, at home and raising children.

In conducting this research I intend to elucidate the place that women occupy within the Superior Court of Justice in Hidalgo, in light of looking at the legal field as a space of male domination due to its historical and social trajectory.

The path of the study, entitled "Analysis of social practices in the Superior Court of Justice", is still under construction since I am a researcher in training in the second semester of the PhD in Social Sciences.

I work under the direction of Dr. Armando Ulises Cerón Martínez, who is a sociologist by the UNAM, Master in Philosophy of Science by the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana and PhD in Pedagogy by the UNAM, besides being a specialist in Bourdian theory and full-time researcher at the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo. His main lines of work are education and research training at postgraduate level, epistemological, theoretical and methodological reflections on research practices.