Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T01:03:46.267Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Women and the Law School, 1970s–1980s

from Part III - Academic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2022

Rosemary Hunter
Affiliation:
University of Kent, Canterbury
Erika Rackley
Affiliation:
University of Kent, Canterbury
Get access

Summary

In thinking about women in law schools in the 1970s and 1980s, I want to begin with the impact on education, including higher education, of the significant political, economic and cultural shifts in the 1950s and 1960s. I am five years younger than Brenda Hale, and I come from a different family background. But both Brenda and I were at grammar schools in England in the early 1960s. Opportunities for girls were embedded in the education system in subtle and less subtle ways. The Robbins Report in 1963 drew attention to the way girls were siphoned into training as teachers and nurses, and the small number opting for science degrees. It is extraordinary to discover that only just over 2 per cent of girls and 5.6 per cent of boys went on to university in 1962. Some boys had alternative career tracks to the legal and accountancy professions via articled clerkships (often obtained through family connections). Twice as many girls went on to teacher training, but, again, the overall numbers were small. Because secondary schools were selective – and I know from my later research into women law professors that many law students came from private schools – Brenda and I, from the age of eleven, were already mixing with a relatively small range of peers.

Type
Chapter
Information
Justice for Everyone
The Jurisprudence and Legal Lives of Brenda Hale
, pp. 33 - 43
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×