The war crystalized gender aspects in multiple legal relations (e. g., related to mobilization and service with the Ukrainian Armed Forces, state border crossing, mass sexual violence in the occupied territories, gender-based torture, etc.), putting this subject to the foreground in administering justice. The actions of the aggressor state leadership are of particular attention in researching the legal phenomena via the “lenses of gender” as these manifest a “perfect example of toxic masculinity”.

The past stages of the judicial reform indicate that gender approach was not accounted for. However, legislative changes, sectoral “success stories” and international commitments of Ukraine gave grounds to hope that it will be considered in the new Strategy for the Development of the Judiciary.

The objective of the article is to analyse the Strategy for the Development of the Judiciary and Constitutional Justice for 2021–2023 (the Strategy) so far as the judiciary system is concerned, in the light of international standards on ensuring gender equality via access to justice as well as to formulate a few recommendations on implementing gendered approach during the judiciary reform.

Analysis of the key Strategy-listed issues that cause the need for further refinements to organization and functioning of the judiciary and administration of justice (totalling at 19 points, one being “impediments to access to justice”) leads to the following conclusions: (a) some issues are excessively detailed whereas others are formulated in too abstract terms, (b) disparity in the scale and significance of the listed issues, (c) focus on the judiciary bodies and their functions. Comparing these with the challenges to justice reform, as identified by the foreign researchers, indicates that only certain ones are specifically spelled out in the Strategy as the key issues, while relevance of the others appears from analysis of the annual reports on the status of independence of judges in Ukraine by the High Council of Justice (the HCJ). In contrast, relevance of a few challenges (e. g., cultural attitudes and practices, which result in human rights violation, lack of training in international law) does not emerge at all and remains below the reformers’ radar, while it is exactly these challenges that impede effective access to justice.

The overall analysis of the Strategy affords a conclusion that the proposed measures (with few exceptions) are not the ones aimed at removing obstacles to access to justice and, despite the declared account for the best international standards and practices, these in fact have not been accounted for (at the very least those that have to do with ensuring equal access to justice and implementation of the gender approach). Therefore, it would be appropriate to account for the international standards on all essential components of access to justice while drafting strategic documents at subsequent stages of the judicial reform in developing the measures to remedy the obstacles and enhance access to justice. In addition, the recommendations cover the change in approaching the judicial statistics and implementation of mandatory collection, processing, analysis, dissemination, storage, protection and use of the statistical data on all male and female appeals to the judiciary system as well as scientific research, sociological and expert questionnaires for gender analysis of the judiciary system.

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