Women have come a long way, but the prize of equal space on the bench still eludes them. In the past year the first female county manager has been appointed, a woman garda officer has made it to the rank of chief superintendent and another has been appointed revenue commissioner.
But nowhere in the state is the gender imbalance more obvious than in the judiciary.
Of 108 judges, only 19 are women. One of these is Mrs Justice Susan Denham, the first woman judge of the Supreme Court and the most prominent woman in Irish legal circles.
