More than any other profession women entered in the nineteenth century, law was the most rigidly engendered. Access to courts, bar associations, and law schools was controlled by men, while the very act of gaining admission to practice law demanded that women reinterpret the male-constructed jurisprudence that excluded them. This history of women lawyers—from the 1860s to the 1930s—defines the contours of women's integration into the modern legal profession.
Nineteenth-century women built a women lawyers' movement through which they fought to gain entrance to law schools and bar associations, joined the campaign for women suffrage, and sought to balance marriage and career. By the twentieth century, most institutional barriers crumbled and younger women entered the law confident that equal opportunity had replaced sexual discrimination. Their optimism was misplaced as many women lawyers continued to encounter discrimination, faced limited opportunities for professional advancement, and struggled to balance gender and professional identity.
Based on rich and diverse archival sources, this book is the landmark study of the history of women lawyers in America.
Virginia G. Drachman is Professor of History at Tufts University. She is the author of Women Lawyers and the Origins of Professional Identity in America and Hospital with a Heart.
Table of Contents
Introduction
"A Sphere with an Infinite and Indeterminable Radius"
"I Was. the Only Woman in a Large School of Men"
"Sweeter Manners, Purer Laws"
"I Think I Haven't Neglected My Husband"
"Some of Our Best Students Have Been Women"
"Primarily for Women"
"Woman's Position in the Profession"
'The Golden Age of Opportunity for Women"
"Girl Lawyer Has Small Chance for Success"
Appendix 1: Tables
Appendix 2: Sources and Methods
Abbreviations
Notes
Index
What People are Saying About This
In accessible prose, Sisters in Law describes the first six or seven decades of women's entry into the legal profession. The admission of women to the bars of the various states, and to law schools, has never before been so deftly documented and distilled. The book is especially helpful in providing multiple biographical sketches of early women lawyers, and in exploring the conflicts women faced between family life and the pursuit of a legal career.
Martha L. Minow
This book provides the first scholarly presentation of the history of women's efforts to practice law in the United States. Written by the leading scholar in the history of women lawyers, who is also a significant figure in writings on the history of women doctors, the book is bound to be of considerable interest to historians, lawyers, scholars of social change, and a general reading public interested in shifting gender roles...Drachman's book is a subtle, rich history interweaving stories of individual women with exploration of larger patterns of barriers presented both by the legal profession and by the larger society's expectations of gender and family roles. Following the developments between 1860 and 1930, the book examines a relatively tiny number of women lawyers compared with the current numbers, but as a result, individual stories and experiences can receive careful attention. Sisters in Law is a contribution to the burgeoning fields of women's studies, including women's history. It also will be an important contribution to the sociology of professions and its subfield, the legal profession...Besides simply advancing knowledge on this subject, the book reflects massive archival research and brings individual women's stories and words into a compelling narrative of the larger history. The method combines social and intellectual history. — Martha L. Minow, Harvard Law School
Nancy F. Cott
In accessible prose, Sisters in Law describes the first six or seven decades of women's entry into the legal profession. The admission of women to the bars of the various states, and to law schools, has never before been so deftly documented and distilled. The book is especially helpful in providing multiple biographical sketches of early women lawyers, and in exploring the conflicts women faced between family life and the pursuit of a legal career. — Nancy F. Cott, Yale University
