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“It’s a girl!” the Ontario press announced, as Canada’s first woman lawyer was called to the Ontario bar in February 1897. Quiet Rebels explores experiences of exclusion among the few women lawyers for the next six decades, and how their experiences continue to shape gender issues in the contemporary legal profession.
Mary Jane Mossman tells the stories of all 187 Ontario women lawyers called to the bar from 1897 to 1957, revealing the legal profession’s gendered patterns. Comprising a small handful of students—or even a single student—at the Law School, women were often ignored, and they faced discrimination in obtaining articling positions and legal employment. Most were Protestant, white, and middle-class, and a minority of Jewish, Catholic, Black, and immigrant women lawyers faced even greater challenges. The book also explores some changes, as well as continuities, for the much larger numbers of Ontario women lawyers in recent decades.
This longitudinal study of women lawyers’ gendered experiences in the profession during six decades of social, economic, and political change in early twentieth-century Ontario identifies factors that created—or foreclosed on—women lawyers’ professional success. The book’s final section explores how some current women lawyers, despite their increased numbers, must remain “quiet rebels” to succeed.
Mary Jane Mossman is Professor Emerita, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. She is the author of many articles and the book The First Women Lawyers: A Comparative Study of Gender, Law and the Legal Professions (2006), which explores early women lawyers' experiences of gender exclusion in several world jurisdictions.
Preface
Prologue
Telling the Stories of Women Becoming Lawyers in Ontario
Toronto 1927: “A Toast to the Future of Women in Law”
Gender and History: Women and the “Gentleman’s Profession” of Law
Gender and Biography: The “Woman Question,” Puzzles, and Silences
Women Lawyers: Connecting the Past and the Present
Researching the Stories of Women Lawyers
PART ONE
THE FIRST WOMEN LAWYERS: MAKING HISTORY
Women in Law: An International Movement
Chapter One
Challenging Male Exclusivity in the Canadian Legal Professions, 1897–1918
The Canadian Context at the Turn of the Century
The “First” Women Lawyers in Canada
A Legacy of Gendered Precedents and Patterns
Chapter Two
After Clara Brett Martin: Ontario’s Early Women Lawyers
New Challenges in the Legal Profession
Challenging Ontario’s “Gentlemen’s Profession”
A Kaleidoscope of Patterns and Puzzles
PART TWO
OPPORTUNITIES AND BARRIERS: THE INTERWAR YEARS, 1919–39
After the First World War: A “Turning Point” for Women?
Chapter Three
Pioneers and Prejudice: After the War, 1919–29
Chapter Four
“Unlimited Possibilities”? The Depression Years, 1930–39
One Hundred Women Lawyers: “A Meagre, If Resourceful, Handful”
PART THREE
GENDERED LEGAL CONTEXTS: WAR AND POST-WAR REFORMS, 1940–57
Women Lawyers in War and Peace: Progress and Stasis
Chapter Five
“Gendered Hierarchies and Relations of Power”, 1940–49
Chapter Six
Transitions in Law and Legal Education, 1950–57
Achievements on the Margins of the Legal Profession
PART FOUR
AFTER 1957: CHANGING GENDER PATTERNS
Continuity or Transformation?
The Accreditation of University Law Schools
A Surge in Numbers and Second-Wave Feminism
Transformations in Legal Practice and Professional Culture
Diversifying the Bar
Women Lawyers: Still at the Margins?
Epilogue
A Legacy of Gendered Patterns
“Quiet Rebels”
The WLAO “Toast to the Future” 1927: Rewriting History?
Appendix: Statutes in Canada re the Admission of Women as Lawyers
Selected Bibliography
Index of Names of Women Lawyers
Index of Subjects