“An Embarrassingly and Severely Masculine Atmosphere”: Women, Gender and the Legal Profession at Osgoode Hall, 1920s–1960s

Abstract

AbstractThis paper examines gender relations within Ontario's Osgoode Hall Law School from the 1920s to the 1960s, focussing on the women who entered the school during this period. It analyzes their backgrounds and motives for entering law school and it also examines their experiences at the school and as articling students. This paper argues that the legal profession's insistence on its masculine nature shaped women law students' attempts to construct their own professional identities and to reconcile their professionalism with their gender, ethnic and racial, and class backgrounds (the majority of these women were Anglo-Celtic and middle-class). Yet while masculinity was the norm for both the profession and the law school, it was not a static, monolithic construct; it was constructed and expressed in a number of ways by male students and instructors at Osgoode Hall, particularly in the pages of the student press and through the activities of O s goode's student organization. Such struggles to define male law students' identities invariably affected women law students; in turn, through the Women's Law Association of Ontario, they worked to create an alternative space where women lawyers and students could work for change and attempt to reconcile professionalism and middle-class femininity.