Britain's most senior female judge has slammed the legal profession for failing to give top jobs to women, blaming 'unconscious sexism'.

Speaking at the London School of Economics, Baroness Hale of Richmond, the only female Supreme Court justice, said talented female candidates are missing out on senior positions because employers are not used to being around women.

She said: 'There's an awful lot of unconscious assumptions and judgments that are made when people don't realise that that's what they're doing.

'The more used they are to having women, and people from ethnic minorities, around, the less that's a problem because they know how we behave.

'But if you hardly ever see a woman, you don't really know how to assess somebody who's a candidate,' The Independent reports.

Lady Hale argued the profession is still weighted in favour of well-known lawyers and that it would benefit from greater diversity.

'It is tiring to have to be talking about why we have so few women in the higher ranks of the judiciary in this country when most countries in the world have solved the problem. It is a bore,' she said.

'I would like us not to have to talk about it, but we do have to talk about it because the present situation is terrible.'

Lady Hale, who was appointed a High Court judge in 1994, said that she approved of a tiebreaker system which would see people appoint a candidate from a minority background if all applicants were seen as equally qualified.

She described such a system as 'affirmative action' rather than 'positive discrimination'.

Law Society figures show that 47 per cent of solicitors and 35 per cent of barristers are female, and that women have accounted for more than half of entrants to the profession since 1993.

But there are only 21 women judges out of a total of 148 in the Court of Appeal and High Court.

According to research by Laurence Simons, a specialist legal recruitment company, at the start of this year, the average pay for male lawyers – both inhouse and in private practice – was down £5,000 on 2011, while pay among female lawyers was up by nearly £1,400.

Despite that rise, the average female lawyer was still paid £51,396 less per year than her average male colleague, with total remuneration about two thirds that of men.

Britain's most senior female judge has slammed the legal profession for failing to give top jobs to women, blaming 'unconscious sexism'.

Speaking at the London School of Economics, Baroness Hale of Richmond, the only female Supreme Court justice, said talented female candidates are missing out on senior positions because employers are not used to being around women.

She said: 'There's an awful lot of unconscious assumptions and judgments that are made when people don't realise that that's what they're doing.

'The more used they are to having women, and people from ethnic minorities, around, the less that's a problem because they know how we behave.

'But if you hardly ever see a woman, you don't really know how to assess somebody who's a candidate,' The Independent reports.

Lady Hale argued the profession is still weighted in favour of well-known lawyers and that it would benefit from greater diversity.

'It is tiring to have to be talking about why we have so few women in the higher ranks of the judiciary in this country when most countries in the world have solved the problem. It is a bore,' she said.

'I would like us not to have to talk about it, but we do have to talk about it because the present situation is terrible.'

Lady Hale, who was appointed a High Court judge in 1994, said that she approved of a tiebreaker system which would see people appoint a candidate from a minority background if all applicants were seen as equally qualified.

She described such a system as 'affirmative action' rather than 'positive discrimination'.

Law Society figures show that 47 per cent of solicitors and 35 per cent of barristers are female, and that women have accounted for more than half of entrants to the profession since 1993.

But there are only 21 women judges out of a total of 148 in the Court of Appeal and High Court.

According to research by Laurence Simons, a specialist legal recruitment company, at the start of this year, the average pay for male lawyers – both inhouse and in private practice – was down £5,000 on 2011, while pay among female lawyers was up by nearly £1,400.

Despite that rise, the average female lawyer was still paid £51,396 less per year than her average male colleague, with total remuneration about two thirds that of men.