Gender, Choice and Commitment

First published in 1998, reissued here with a new preface, this volume is the first full-length discussion of women's experiences in the solicitors' profession in the UK. It provides an account which is grounded in historical research and a contemporary research study. The authors explore this material to analyze both women's own experiences and the mainstream culture and structure of the profession. Following a treatment of the struggle against the formal exclusionary barriers to women's entry to the profession, this book then seeks to identify the informal obstacles which were subsequently erected to women's participation and career progression, and examine their persistence, in a modified form, into the contemporary era. The analysis draws on perspectives from feminist jurisprudence to the sociology of the professions to shed light on the processes which support women's continued subordination in employment as lawyers.

Hilary Sommerlad is Professor of Law & Social Justice, School of Law, University of Leeds. Following a history degree (Cambridge), and a PhD in Political Science (York), she retrained in law and briefly practised as a solicitor before returning to academia in 1990 to direct the research project into women lawyers, on which this book is based. She established and directed the Centre for Research into the Diversity in the Professions (Leeds Beckett University), the Centre for Professional Legal Education and Research (Birmingham University), and at Leeds directs the Legal Professions Research Group. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and a founder member of the Judicial Diversity Initiative. Hilary has continued to research diversity in the legal profession. Since 1992 she has given over 260 presentations and her published output includes eight books and published reports, 27 articles and 31 book chapters. Pete Sanderson is Professor Emeritus in Education at the University of Huddersfield. He completed his BA in History at Cambridge, an M Phil in Housing and Race Relations at York, and a PhD in Psychology at Leeds. He has taught Research Methods, Urban Sociology, Welfare Policy and Youth Justice, and has worked as a contract researcher, and taught in both Further and Higher Education. His work with Hilary Sommerlad on the legal profession has involved work on gender, access to justice and professional knowledge. In addition , he has written on race and community cohesion in the UK.

New Preface for the Reissue 1. Introduction. 2. Gender and the Legal Labour Market. 3. 'The Common Sense of Mankind': the Common Law and the Historical Exclusion of Women from the Legal Profession. 4. 'Bonds of Trust': From Informal Exclusion to Full Participation? 5. The Men's Room: Cultural Capital and the Fraternal Contract. 6. 'She's All Right for a Bird': The Accommodation of Women. 7. The Meaning of the Career Break: Human Capital, Cultural Capital, Social Capital. 8. Conclusion.