Quiet Rebels: AHistory of Ontario Women Lawyers is a very thick volume, available in print and electronic formats. The book is an historical narrative telling the stories of over 200 women lawyers in Ontario, Canada. It can be classified as a group biography, where the author provides a number of details about each of these women over different periods, and it recounts their experiences in combating the “gendered patterns in a culture of male exclusivity”. Mossman’s storytelling technique made reading this book very easy. Presenting the real-life experiences of the named individuals, this expertly researched work describes vividly the individual challenges experienced by women in legal education and practice.
The book begins with a prologue and ends with an epilogue, and it is divided into four parts, with each covering different periods from 1897 to the present. It contains the following, which Ifound extremely helpful:
-
1. Appendix with a list of statutes regarding the admission of women lawyers
-
2. Selected bibliography citing archival sources, books, book chapters, journal articles, theses and dissertations, and reports
-
3. Index of names of the women lawyers discussed in the book
-
4. Index of subjects
It was only when Iread the epilogue in Quiet Rebels that Igained an insight into why the author chose this title. According to Mossman, the legacy of the early women lawyers presents them as quiet rebels: “… early women lawyers recognized their roles as quiet rebels for women lawyers of the future,” she writes.
Mossman further explores whether the changes in the legal profession represented “continuity” or a transformation of their status. She also describes the significance of a toast (“Toast to the Future”) made at a celebratory dinner held by members of the Women’s Law Association of Ontario (WLAO) in April 1927, noting that it may have served as an “oblique acknowledgement of the difficult challenges” being experienced by the women.
The author reflects on how the different eras of international movements in countries like the United Kingdom, France, United States, Australia, New Zealand, Italy and Belgium challenged male exclusivity in the legal profession, noting that this “fostered new ambitions among women in Canada in the early twentieth century”.
She also recounts the entry of women to higher education in Canada, highlighting the resistance faced by women who desired to study law and medicine, even though there was a different arrangement for legal education– at that time this was through apprenticeship before formal lectures started.
There are also interesting sections that highlight the intervening role played by provincial legislatures and Attorney Generals to the entry of women to the legal profession.
Throughout the book, Mossman identifies precedents and patterns relating to female lawyers, such as completion of university degrees before studying law, and religious affiliation. Many were were of British descent, came from middle-class families, had male relatives who were lawyers and had family connections to the practice of law. All of these had significant impacts on the entry of women to the legal profession during the period covered in the book.
Mossman also noted several times that marriage precluded women from forging their careers as legal practitioners.
There are several references to law libraries, librarians and the importance of legal research in the study of law. The law library became one of the creative spaces for early women lawyers to address the exclusionary practices of the lack of a female robing room. Early women lawyers worked as law librarians and wrote relevant and useful publications for practitioners.
Dividing the book into sections covering the different periods is another distinctive feature of this publication. For example, the author noted that during World War II, female law students and lawyers were sought after because their male counterparts had enlisted to serve. But as soon as the war ended, women lawyers once again experienced gender discrimination.
Mossman is also the author of The First Women Lawyers, AComparative Study of Gender, Law and the Legal Professions (Oxford Hart Publishing, 2006) which focused on the first women lawyers in British colonies, British Empire Canada, Great Britain and Europe.
In the epilogue, the author shares a personal experience in the history of gendered patterns in the academic setting in the late 1980s.
The stories in this book present information that would have been missed in regular biographies of female lawyers, and Ibelieve it would make for a good movie, to recount and bring to life the historical facts in the book.
The book would be of interest to scholars of legal history, gender studies, Canadian legal research or foreign comparative legal research.
