How times have changed - 1974 advice to women who were considering becoming a barrister.

[Another2Cats]

Courtesy of someone I follow on X, Barbara Rich. An extract from the 1974 ninth edition of 'Learning the Law' by Glanville Williams. This is an interesting insight into attitudes at the time. (image attached)

This was a book that sixth formers and university students interested in legal careers used to be urged to read.

It had a specific entry on 'Women'

Practice at the Bar is a demanding task for a man; it is even more difficult for a woman. Her trouble starts when she tries to arrange pupillage and a seat in chambers. Pressure being what it is, nearly all barristers who have a vacancy would prefer to give it to a man; and even when she has found a seat the clerk may prefer to "build up" a man. In my view, it would be folly for a woman to read for the Bar with the intention of practising without first establishing that someone already in practice will help her. She would be better advised to become a solicitor, perhaps transferring to the Bar when acquaintances have been made.

In building up her practice at the Bar a woman has a double prejudice to conquer; the prejudice of the solicitor, and the prejudice of the solicitor's lay client. It is not easy for a young man to get up and face the court; many women find it harder still. An advocate's task is essentially combative, whereas women are not generally prepared to give battle unless they are annoyed. A woman's voice, also, does not carry as well as a man's.

Notwithstanding these disadvantages, some women succeed. A married woman may not mind that her practice is slow at building up, when small children are making demands on her. Greater success may coincide with greater domestic freedom. We have had our first woman High Court judge, county and Crown Court judge, recorder and metropolitan magistrate. Moreover, the technical Bar qualification enables many women to take legal positions in banks, industry, commerce and government.

There is no longer any reason why a woman should not succeed as a solicitor. A few years ago a survey found that there were over 400 women practising as solicitors. Women have a special qualification in matters of divorce and nullity, since married women frequently prefer to confide the details of their married life to a member of their own sex. In a certain city, married women solicitors have established a "corner" in matrimonial matters before justices; they are said to be far more aggressive than their male rivals in cross-examining men as to their sex life!

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I really have no words.

Although, to be fair, the 2002 edition did drop this whole thing, but this - or similar - was a publication that was being suggested to sixth formers in the 1980s and 1990s.

Link to tweet on X

https://x.com/BarbaraRich_law/status/2091693902138884511

If this was before the sex discrimination act in 1975, presumably none of this would even have been illegal?

I wonder what the next edition said.

Why do you have no words?
It was broadly speaking being realistic and reflecting the views/prejudices of the time.

It was only in 1995 when I was called to Bar that women were allowed to wear trousers to court😳

Can't say I'm surprised by this. My male careers teacher in the mid 70's was clearly of the view that girls should leave school at 16 and go to do a few secretarial qualifications in the local college and then get a nice little job in the bank on the high street. Quite of a my contemporaries did this. I stayed on to do A' levels and university [sciences] but I was pretty unusual in doing that.

I don’t know why you “ really have no words”. Although clearly you do have words.

The book was first published in 1945, coincidentally the first year that a female stipendiary (judicial) magistrate was appointed, and it really wasn’t updated very much after that. Rose Heilbron was elevated to the Bench, as a Recorder, in 1956. Williams was just outdated and very old fashioned.

To counterbalance this, note that Henry Cecil, who wrote the Brothers In Law books and sat as a circuit judge, wrote his book “Daughters in law” in the early 60s and in that there is a judge who has twin daughters, one of whom becomes a Solicitor, although he thinks she would be better as a Barrister and the other becomes a Barrister, although he thinks that she would be better as a Solicitor.

There were many crusading female barristers. They weren’t allowed to wear trousers in court for much of the 20th century and their skirts had to be no shorter than the length of their gown. Famously, there was a female Barrister who responded to this by shortening her gown until it was pretty much miniskirt length and then she wore a skirt that match. Women had no problems in showing the way and William certainly didn’t hold them back.

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Personally I think it would probably have been helpful to be aware of the hurdles you would face in advance of them. Don’t shoot the messenger I say. Attitudes to women in the law were still pretty outdated in the early 90s, God knows what they were like in 1974. In the sixties my mother was expected to leave her job (supervising a secretarial pool) on pregnancy.

"A woman's voice, also, does not carry as well as a man's."

Reminds me of Robin Moira White going on about how useful it was to have a deep voice rather than a "Mickey mouse" one. That's the 2026 version of this delightful sexism.

I had a search for the RMW clip but unfortunately couldn't find it. If anyone has it, please do share!

Reminded me of those Harry Enfield sketches! 😁

Toilet provision was also a barrier to women working as lawyers. Law firms, chambers and other legal institutions used the lack of women’s lavatories as a reason for not promoting women to senior positions within their organisations.
https://first100years.org.uk/news/ontheroll-in-the-supreme-court/

On the subject of RMW, when he worked in the railways, there were no toilets for female staff so RMW writes that the men used to check there were no other men in the staff toilets so their female colleagues could use the men’s. I would like to ask RMW whether that was for safety, dignity and/or privacy of those women and men. And why women today should not have those privileges.

I have data of what goes on in station toilets and I can demonstrate single sex design is still absolutely necessary for health and safety. A ‘solution’ of making cubicles private within a mixed sex washroom would not have worked then and doesn’t work now.

It's a helpful illustration of why the law outlawing sex discrimination (enacted the following year for GB and a further year later for NI) was so important. And it is clear given that this was published in 1974 that it was a case of the law driving social change, rather than social change driving a change in the law. That underlines why protection against sex discrimination remains important today and why the SC ruling last year was so important.

I know, I know. I'm preaching to the converted. But I think sometimes the focus on single sex SPACES (important though those are) allows people to take their eye off the bigger picture, which is that protection against sex discrimination would have evaporated if 'woman' and 'female' had been turned into mixed sex categories.

As a former solicitor, I'm not sure I would say that things have moved on behind closed doors as much as we would like to think.

And yet and all, if you look at the spirit in which it is given, it is rather clear-eyed advice.

And you couldnt order at the bar at El Vino's for even longer!
In my early years at the turn of century some solicitors including a bunch who instructed chambers used to go to the lap dancing club on Grays Inn Rd and it was looked down on if female juniors didnt go. Happily my clerks never pushed it but lots did (& lots of women went, tbf).

Oh god, I worked in the City (stockbroking) in the 70s and well remember going to the pub at lunchtime with colleagues and there was a stripper performing !
I was really uncomfortable and remember feeling for her, she clearly detested it - and all the men ogling her.
There was a huge amount of misogyny about ‘women in stockbroking,’ and even those who weren’t openly misogynistic were incredibly patronising.
I quickly got into financial journalism which wasn’t nearly so bad.

"I wonder what the next edition said."

Your question prompted me to have a look. I don't know about the next edition, but by the time of the eleventh edition in 1982 the whole section on women had been removed.

There was still some reference though.

In a section entitled 'Practice at the Bar', starting from page 184, the author speaks of how difficult it is to obtain a place in chambers:

The situation has arisen because of recent large recruitments to the Bar, the traditional but constricting attachment of the Bar to the Temple and Gray's and Lincoln's Inn, and the natural reluctance of established practitioners to colonise new chambers.

He then goes on to say:

Women and non-whites are likely to experience particular difficulty 4.

Footnote:

4 As to women, the Bow Group in evidence to the Royal Commission on Legal Services in 1977 said that many chambers limited the number of tenancies given to women, on the ground that women tend to have children and not to engage in full-time practice, and so cannot pay a full proportion of the rent. For the same reason they are not appreciated by the clerk, whose income depends directly on the income of members. On the general question see Pearson and Sachs in 43 MLR 400

I take the last sentence to be a reference to 'Barristers and Gentleman: A Critical Look at Sexism in the Legal Profession' in volume 43, issue 4 of Modern Law Review pages 400-414.

This is available as a pdf from here:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1980.tb01600.x

The pdf itself is here:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1980.tb01600.x

Yes, I remember the young male solicitors used to go to that lap dancing club on Fridays for beer and “entertainment”. We women were not allowed to wear trousers. Sexual harassment was fairly low level to me (partners peering down blouses etc), but a complaint would have been career ending (for the complainant who would have been squeezed out). Different times, I hope.

As a retired teacher I once worked in a girls school where an utterly fabulous 'old girl' who was a barrister came to the Prizegiving to give out the prizes and make a speech.

She was roughly late 40s by then and had quite a lot to drink before going on to give her speech and she was bluntly ruthless in what she said to the girls about how shit and difficult it was as a woman trying to make their way in the patriarchy. She used it as an opportunity to warn them of the sexism, harassment and abuse they would face and told them to stand their ground, take no shit and keep pushing, but to recognise that men would hate them and try anything to get rid of them.

I sat at the back clapping loudly and thoroughly enjoying the horrified faces of the governors (mostly male) wondering who the hell had booked her.

She was brilliant.

It’s stuff like this that younger women, no, younger people need to be aware of. I’m a civil engineer - women’s toilets on site are relatively receiving my career, along with men valuing my opinion. Despite the provision of women’s toilets on site as standard now, albeit with pink key fobs and a secondary use as a store room, toxic masculinity still exists. DM was a barrister though. Her call to the Bar and my sister’s birth (youngest of 4!) were in the same newspaper on the same day in the mid 70s. She did her pupillage and got a place in chambers. Her head of chambers was pretty enlightened for the early 80s, and probably liked having an “older” working mother in Chambers. Unfortunately her clerk and the solicitors they worked with were less so. She did practice for a handful of years, but various circumstances meant that she gave up, for a lower, but more regular and secure job as a legal secretary. She is pretty awesome though.

Your mum sounds cool @IbizaToTheNorfolkBroads. it’s a shame her career at the Bar didn’t flourish though.

I was asked how I would balance a medical career with a family in a university interview in 1995. They then followed by suggesting the general practice might be more suitable than my stated aim of anaesthesia.

I didn't get in to that university but did get in elsewhere.

31 years later I'm working as an NHS consultant anaesthetist and looking around my colleagues I'm not sure any of us have worked out the answer to that question but most of us are still standing and managing to make it work. Somehow.

I've worked with woman who were openly sidelined because they had kids just 10 years ahead of me. While misogyny is now hidden we mustn't forget how blatant it used to be.

A lot of that is reasonable, apart from maybe this:
"An advocate's task is essentially combative, whereas women are not generally prepared to give battle unless they are annoyed. "

Other than that, he's not saying women shouldn't do it. In fact it's pretty forward thinking to ackowledge that women's struggles are due to ingrained sexism, including the double whammy of sexism from employer and client.

I was thinking the same. Honestly, when I was setting out as a vet, I think that I might have been better prepared mentally if I’d had some kind of warning that life was often fundamentally unfair for women.

I set out (early 90s) thinking that women had equality now and all I had to do was work hard to get on. It took me many years to work out that men, even as the number of women rose, still got paid more, were considered more readily for promotion and partnership.

It was thoroughly demoralising thinking maybe I was doing something wrong, when the reality was almost certainly that my sex was a significant barrier.

I think women probably still face all that. We’re just no longer allowed to talk about it.

This isn’t the least surprising for anyone who lived and worked in the 70s. (Me)

The level of misogyny and sexism would leave today’s females in a state of shock.

I was a woman in a man’s world, I was the only female in my college class, and in many of
the jobs I had. You learned how to deal with it.

God knows how the youth of today would cope.

It was on this thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4422361-prospect-magazine-kathleen-stock-v-robin-moira-white?page=4&reply=113189873

I couldnt raise the pitch of my voice without losing power and the surgery is too risky given how important my speaking voice is as a professional tool.

The original article from Prospect Magazine seems to no longer exist 🤔 but there is an archived version:

https://archive.md/P6ObC

RMW’s direct quote from the article:

At the other end of the spectrum, while I look female, I sound male as I have done little to alter my speaking voice, as it is something I rely on in my job as a barrister.