Margaret Thornton

Margaret Thornton is an Emerita Professor Law in the ANU College of Law, Australian University, Canberra. Australia. She specialises in feminist legal theory, anti-discrimination law, and policy, including sexual harassment, women in the legal profession and the legal academy, and the corporatisation of universities. She has published widely in these areas – both theoretical and empirical. Margaret has recently been interested in flexible work and working at home as a result of COVID-19. She is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and a Foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law.

There is ongoing suspicion (and fear) about women in positions of authority. It relates to historic and residual biases that women are somehow less rational than men and therefore cannot be trusted. The exclusion of women is taken as evidence of being less able.