Women's History Month- Forget Your Place!

By Ann

30 something – never married- no kids- attractive- articulate-lawyer and single!

Sounds like a great catch.  Until you mention that the lawyer is a female.  That’s when things get tricky.  A strong, educated, self –reliant woman makes people a little uncomfortable.  A woman is able to be passionate, extreme, and even an activist – so long as she knows where she stands and when she stands there she does it on shaky high heels.

For example, we as a society are eagerly willing to celebrate and almost canonize a strong woman like Erin Brokovich, she is fiery, sexy, outspoken and she knows her place.  She has no education.  She wears sexy clothes.  She has three children to support and she relies on a man to keep her head above water.   As long as she knows her place and that place is dependent on a man, then she will be praised for her work and she will even have a movie made about her.  Of course, the female attorneys in the movie are portrayed as dowdy and nerdy because they clearly refuse to be put in their place.

March is women’s history month.  

Of course, it started out as only a week because women’s history wasn’t even taught in school curriculums.  Nonetheless, our history is rich with women who refused to be put in their place, despite harsh repurcussions.





Alice Paul and Lucy Burns were pioneers in the suffragist movement.  They along with 33 other women were arrested for obstructing the sidewalk in front of the White House when they were peacefully picketing.  They were thrown in jail, beaten, choked, tortured, and fed worm infested food for months.  Finally, Lucy Burns went on a hunger strike and for weeks she was held down and force fed liquid until she would vomit.

Women Faced Opposition in the Practice of Law

“You can’t be shining lights at the Bar because you are too kind. You can never be corporation lawyers because you are not cold-blooded. You have not a high grade of intellect. I doubt you could ever make a living.” - Clarence Darrow (to a group of 19^th century women lawyers).

In 1875, the Wisconsin Supreme Court denied Lavinia Goodell admission to the state bar on the grounds that “[n]ature has tempered woman as little for the juridical conflicts of the court room, as for the physical conflicts of the battle field. Womanhood is moulded [sic] for gentler and better things.” 

Then in the 1950s Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor graduated from Stanford Law but no law firm in California was willing to hire her as a lawyer due to her sex, although one firm did offer her a position as a legal secretary.

It made me think of Hillary Clinton’s concession speech where she boldly stated:

"Although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it has about 18 million cracks in it and the light is shining through like never before."

In 2008, Hillary Clinton ran for President and the newspapers and the mainstream talked incessantly about her suits, her hair, and her marital problems.  I suspect it was because our society wasn’t ready yet for a woman to be so self reliant so as to be a leader. 

Not yet.  But we’re getting there.