Gender, Identity and Professionalism: A Review of the First Women Lawyers by Mary Jane Mossman

In her book First Women Lawyers: A Comparative Study of Gender, Law and the Legal Professions, Mary Jane Mossman situates the life experiences of some of the first women lawyers within the broader context of various aspects of early women’s movements in the United States, Canada, Britain, New Zealand, British India and Europe. In this comparative analysis, Mossman provides detailed and often infuriating accounts of the sometimes monumental efforts of women to overcome sexist and racist barriers in order to gain access to legal education and to the legal profession. What is perhaps the most interesting (and simultaneously disturbing) aspect of the analysis is her artful use of the themes of gender, identity and professionalism to connect the disparate stories of women from several jurisdictions around the world. These themes weave together to paint a portrait of battles won and lost by feminist movements, elements of which still remain evident within the profession today. Disappointingly, in some cases those who fought for women’s access to legal education and the legal profession strategically chose to isolate their efforts from what were perceived as the more radical goals of suffrage and racial equality. Even after access was gained, many of the first women lawyers consciously worked to be absorbed seamlessly into the profession by distancing themselves from feminist identities and causes in favour of professional ones built around the myth of the monastically committed white, upper-class man.Our review of The First Women Lawyers is organized into two parts. The first part provides an overview of some of the common hurdles faced by women attempting to gain access to legal education and practice across the various jurisdictions upon which Mossman reports, focusing on situations in which choices were made to distance these efforts from parallel social justice projects that were ongoing at the same time. In the second part, we discuss some of the ways in which Mossman’s work demonstrates that these kinds of distancing efforts continued after initial successes in gaining access, perhaps both as a reflection of the relatively elite social status of many of the first women lawyers and as mechanisms for day-to-day survival in a profession imbued with a white, upper-class male identity of its own.