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About
"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. Quiet Rebels tells the stories of 187 women who were called to the Ontario bar between 1897 and 1957, identifying gendered patterns of exclusion. It also explores women lawyers' experiences in later decades, when many more women entered the legal profession, assessing the extent of "changes" or "continuities" for some women lawyers. a working group on gender in the Law Society of Ontario was convened in 2021. Conclusions and efforts to implement recommendations around the challenges faced by women and racialized lawyers have been controversial addresses hierarchies in the legal profession -- divisions that marginalize racialized women begin as early as law school the book documents gendered patterns, comparing those for current women lawyers to earlier generations
Quiet Rebels refers to efforts of early women lawyers to fit in while still working for change
The book does not offer simple conclusions about why some lawyers succeed despite gender and race but others do not but takes up that discussion with respect to circumstances that have impact: family background, finances, immigration or racialized status, sexuality, disability, etc. Some stories require us to rethink what is "success" given the challenges faced of interest to legal historians, women's historians as well as practitioners of law and adjacent professions This brilliant and innovative 'group biography' of pioneering women lawyers in Ontario gives voice to those mostly overlooked women. In doing so, it also sensitively explores the still elusive issues surrounding the relationships between inclusion/diversity and representation/reformulation and asks if what they began was the transformation or merely a slightly altered continuation of the traditional in the legal profession and the practice of law. Highly recommended. Mary Jane Mossman has produced an extraordinary work of scholarship in excavating the details of the 187 women called to the Ontario Bar between 1897 and 1957, as their lives were formerly entombed in silence. While we are familiar with the resistance of the 'gentleman's profession' towards the entry of women, the struggles undergone by individual women to establish a career are less well known. The wealth of detail in this book re
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. Quiet Rebels tells the stories of 187 women who were called to the Ontario bar between 1897 and 1957, identifying gendered patterns of exclusion. It also explores women lawyers' experiences in later decades, when many more women entered the legal profession, assessing the extent of "changes" or "continuities" for some women lawyers. a working group on gender in the Law Society of Ontario was convened in 2021. Conclusions and efforts to implement recommendations around the challenges faced by women and racialized lawyers have been controversial addresses hierarchies in the legal profession -- divisions that marginalize racialized women begin as early as law school the book documents gendered patterns, comparing those for current women lawyers to earlier generations
Quiet Rebels refers to efforts of early women lawyers to fit in while still working for change
The book does not offer simple conclusions about why some lawyers succeed despite gender and race but others do not but takes up that discussion with respect to circumstances that have impact: family background, finances, immigration or racialized status, sexuality, disability, etc. Some stories require us to rethink what is "success" given the challenges faced of interest to legal historians, women's historians as well as practitioners of law and adjacent professions This brilliant and innovative 'group biography' of pioneering women lawyers in Ontario gives voice to those mostly overlooked women. In doing so, it also sensitively explores the still elusive issues surrounding the relationships between inclusion/diversity and representation/reformulation and asks if what they began was the transformation or merely a slightly altered continuation of the traditional in the legal profession and the practice of law. Highly recommended. Mary Jane Mossman has produced an extraordinary work of scholarship in excavating the details of the 187 women called to the Ontario Bar between 1897 and 1957, as their lives were formerly entombed in silence. While we are familiar with the resistance of the 'gentleman's profession' towards the entry of women, the struggles undergone by individual women to establish a career are less well known. The wealth of detail in this book re