6 - Women and the Bar

Summary

This chapter considers how and why the societies resisted women even after their admission to the Inns in 1919 and the strategies women law students and barristers deployed to navigate the resolutely masculine culture of the Inns. It argues that beyond their gender, women’s political commitments and social networks mitigated the degree of acceptance or resistance they faced from members of the societies. The chapter also examines the Inns’ fraught reconciliation of the societies’ concerns about overseas students with the new presence of women in their common rooms, gardens, and halls. It considers the complicated mapping of intersectional identities onto the existing culture of the Inns and traces how members of the Inns manipulated space to privilege, protect, include, or exclude female members, colonial members, or female colonial members.