A judge presiding in a divorce tells a Broward woman to go find a new husband in a singles bar because lots of "bimbos" go there and she might find a "wacky" brain surgeon.

An assistant state attorney in Broward is fired after being criticized for wearing short skirts and tight dresses in the courtroom.

A man charged with rape is acquitted after the jury is shown the woman's lace miniskirt and repeatedly told that she wore no underwear. The jury foreman later says, "She asked for it."

Together, these incidents -- and others in the last few years -- have convinced some women that they cannot get a fair shake in Florida's court system.

But it is not only the headline-making cases that leave them with this impression. Anti-female comments and decisions are everyday occurrences in the courts of Broward and Palm Beach counties -- and elsewhere in the state, some women say.

Their suspicions are backed by a 300-page report by a Florida Supreme Court commission, which after a two-year study found that "although some may ignore its existence, gender bias permeates Florida's legal system today."

"Those who regard gender bias as an illusion have never suffered its effects," the commission wrote. "Gender bias is practiced to a disturbing degree by members of this state's legal profession."

Whether they are lawyers, victims or prisoners, women face discrimination in the Florida legal system, the report found.

Women fare particularly badly in family and divorce cases, the area most likely to draw women into court. Last year in Broward, 12,737, or 36 percent, of the civil cases filed were such matters.

The commission found that judges statewide routinely award as much as 75 percent of the family's assets to the husband.

Joan Redding of Coral Springs says she is an example of how women can come up short in a divorce. Married 24 years, she stayed home for the last 19 to raise three sons. Now that she is divorced, she said her husband lives comfortably on a salary of $100,000 a year; she can barely cover the mortgage payment and her house is in foreclosure.

"I can't get hired," Redding said. "Who's going to hire a 52-year-old who hasn't worked for 19 years? The judge told me to go to work and I don't mind going back, but at least the judge, after a marriage that long, could have given me help for a year so I could get on my own two feet. He said, 'Your husband doesn't have the ability to pay.'

"Some women go in expecting the world, that's unrealistic, but you should expect fair and decent treatment and get it. You don't."

Judges disagree about the extent of gender bias in Broward and Palm Beach counties.

"I don't think there is a pattern in this circuit of gender bias. I haven't heard anything but isolated incidents," said Judge Estella M. Moriarty, chief of the 25 judges in Broward's Civil Division.

Allegations of gender bias often come because a judge does not provide enough money for the wife, but, "I think it's difficult to say you have gender bias when you take an income that isn't even enough to support a couple living together and try to divide it for them to live apart. I don't think that's gender bias."

Still, the commission found "many examples of unfortunate judicial behavior" in family cases throughout the state. For example, there was the case of the North Florida woman who complained that her ex-husband was not paying child support. The husband said he could not pay because he bought a new, expensive sports car. The judge excused the husband from past support payments and even reduced the future support, on the grounds that he had taken on a new debt.

During a Broward divorce hearing, Circuit Judge Paul M. Marko III told Marianne Price, 33, she would never make it on her own and suggested she find a new husband in a singles bar. He barred Price, 33, from having a man live in her home even after the divorce, although he said her ex-husband could have the entire Dolphins cheerleading squad run naked through his home.

Marko later apologized to Price.

"The bottom line is that these aren't unusual remarks," said Ricki Tannen, a Hollywood lawyer who served on the Supreme Court's Gender Bias Study Commission. "I wish they were. They are more normal than we would like them to be. Each time I hear of something like this it's like a fresh slap in the face."

Tired of treatment they see as unfair, women in Broward and Palm Beach counties -- and other parts of the state -- are banding together to change things.

Statewide, a 25-member committee is being appointed to implement the recommendations of the Gender Bias Study Commission. In Palm Beach County, a women's organization is interviewing judicial candidates to determine their bias before the fall elections. In Broward, 10 organizations have formed a coalition to fight gender bias in the courts.

The Broward Coalition for Judicial Awareness, made up of 10 organizations with a combined membership of more than 4,000 people, has formed to educate the public about the problem, hold judges accountable for their actions and help bring change, said Marilyn Bonilla, a lawyer who is director of the Broward County Commission on the Status of Women.

One of the coalition's first moves will come today when it holds a public forum to question candidates in this year's judicial elections. The forum is scheduled for 7 p.m. at the Unitarian Church, 3970 NW 21st Ave., Oakland Park.

In Palm Beach County, the 640-member South Palm Beach County chapter of the National Organization for Women is interviewing and endorsing judicial candidates, President Suzanne Jacobs said.

"One of the critical questions we ask is if they are aware of the bias commission's report," Jacobs said.

Jacobs will investigate the possibility of forming a coalition of Palm Beach County organizations similar to the Broward coalition because "we're certainly aware of lots of incidents in the courts here," she said.

Palm Beach County is working to eliminate gender bias through the creation in 1988 of a separate division just to hear family cases such as divorce, custody, support and adoption, said Circuit Judge John D. Wessel, chief of the five-judge Family Law Division.

"The claim is that women don't have the same type of access to the courts and that this, plus delays and other injustices, fall harder on women," Wessel said.

Having a division that deals exclusively with family cases provides easier access, speedier decisions and judges who are "much more sensitive" to the needs of those involved, he said.