Legal Profession, Gender & the Law, Legal History, Women's Studies, Women and the law, Gender 

"This 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." - Voila 

Content:

Introduction : the first women lawyers -- American pioneers : the first women lawyers -- Women lawyers in Canada : becoming lawyers 'on the same terms as men' -- 'Sound women' and legal work : the first women in law in Britain -- Colonies of the British Empire : the first woman lawyer in New Zealand --- The Empire and British India : the first Indian woman 'in law' -- European connections : women in law and the role of Louis Frank -- Conclusion : reflecting on the first women lawyers. 

Includes bibliographical references and index.