2 FAMILY COURTS
A century or so ago, women basically didn’t have rights. Husbands could rape their wives, beat them and refuse them access to their children. So we men are a heck of a long way from having things as bad as our great-great grandmothers. But it’s a disturbing fact that bias has slipped in to the modern family court system, and it’s not doing anyone any favors.In 2008, Newsweek noted that women win sole-custody battles five out of six times. As family law attorney David Pisarra recently pointed out in the Huffington Post, the reason for this is a basic sexism on the part of conservative male judges—who tend to still think women should be at home with the children while men are out earning money. This leads to a strange state of affairs where men are often automatically considered to be a bad parent, even in cases where they’re demonstrably not.Now, I’m not saying that there are no bad fathers. Or that divorce automatically results in fatherless kids: surveys suggest most couples are fine dividing up visitation rights by themselves. However, we should be looking to chase out ANY bias we see in the court system—no matter how small. Otherwise we don’t have real equality.