SMASHING barriers and stereotypes to pieces on multiple levels in her career, Her Honour Judge Anuja Dhir KC is now determined to create an inclusive, diverse and balanced judiciary fairly representing the population of Britain. Apart from being a renowned name in the world of judiciary, Dhir has been a change maker and that too on several fronts. Speaking with the GG2 Power List, Dhir talked in detail about her work on diversity, her early days in the British legal system, her thoughts on dyslexia (as a dyslexic) and how she came to be The Old Bailey’s first woman of colour judge in its 300-year history. “A diverse judiciary fairly representing the population of this country is better for everybody. However, diversity doesn’t just happen overnight. So one of the things that we really battled for at the beginning was being allowed to have a seat at the table. And now, I think what we understand is that that’s not enough and we ought to be included. “Now we’ve evolved into realising that equality means that the workplace must adapt, not the individual.

That’s a big shift,” she explained. “I was involved in the race relations and equality committee of the Bar Council from the early 1990s. So, I have been involved in dealing with equality and diversity, for almost 30 years. I started right at the time when it was quite unpopular and was not something that people talked about or considered important,” she outlined. When she joined the profession, the Race Relations Act and Sexual Discrimination Act didn’t apply to the Bar, because it was a collection of self-employed barristers – meaning legally they were able to employ the same people they had always done – without anyone challenging them.

“It was very white male, Oxford, Oxbridge centred,