The First Women Lawyers: A Comparative Study of Gender, Law and the Legal ProfessionsThis comparative study explores the lives of some of the women who first initiated challenges to male exclusivity in the legal professions in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Their challenges took place at a time of considerable optimism about progressive societal change, including new and expanding opportunities for women, as well as a variety of proposals for reforming law, legal education, and standards of legal professionalism. By situating women's claims for admission to the bar within this reformist context in different jurisdictions, the study examines the intersection of historical ideas about gender and about legal professionalism at the turn of the twentieth century. In exploring these systemic issues, the study also provides detailed examinations of the lives of some of the first women lawyers in six jurisdictions: the United States, Canada, Britain, New Zealand and Australia, India, and western Europe. In exploring how individual women adopted different legal arguments in litigated cases, or devised particular strategies to overcome barriers to professional work, the study assesses how shifting and contested ideas about gender and about legal professionalism shaped women's opportunities and choices, as well as both support for and opposition to their claims. As a comparative study of the first women lawyers in several different jurisdictions, the book reveals how a number of quite different women engaged with ideas of gender and legal professionalism at the turn of the twentieth century. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 23 | |
Becoming Lawyers On the Same Terms as Men | 67 |
The First Women in Law in Britain | 113 |
The First Woman Lawyer in New Zealand | 155 |
The First Indian Woman In Law | 191 |
Women in Law and the Role of Louis Frank | 239 |
Reflecting on the First Women Lawyers | 277 |
| 291 | |
| 319 | |
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Common terms and phrases
According achieve admission of women admitted amendment American application argued arguments avocat barristers become lawyers Benjamin Bradwell Britain British Columbia Brown Canada Canadian challenges Chauvin Chicago citing claims Clara Brett Martin concluded context Cornelia Sorabji Council decades decision Dunedin eligible enacted Ethel Benjamin example Feminism Feminist Femmes French G Gatfield gain admission gender High Court History Hoff Howsam India India Calling judges Justice Lady Hobhouse Langstaff Law Journal Law School Law Society legal education legal profession legislation letter to Lady Liberal Lierde Lincoln’s Inn London Marie Popelin Moreover nineteenth century Ontario organisation Orme Orme's Otago Oxford Papiers Frank permit women Poët political Popelin practise law purdah Québec reform reported Review role social solicitors suggested Supreme Court Susan B Anthony twentieth century University of Toronto University Press VG Drachman vote woman women lawyers women's equality women's movement women's rights women's suffrage York Zealand