by Mary Jane Mossman   According to a Law Society publication in 1993, Ontario’s legal profession was still ‘overwhelmingly white, able-bodied, and middle-class’ – although ‘activism in minority communities, changes in university admission policies, and efforts by the Law Society to address issues of under-representation may have had some impact in recent decades.’[i] Thus, in […]

by Mary Jane Mossman   My current research project focuses on women who were called to the bar of Ontario between 1897 and 1957. As the Law Society’s 1993 exhibition about the history of women lawyers explained, most of these women were middle-class, white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant, with just a ‘scattering of Catholics and a […]

by Mary Jane Mossman   My current research project focuses on women who were called to the bar in Ontario between 1897 and 1957.[1] As the Law Society’s 1993 exhibition about the history of women lawyers pointed out: Not surprisingly, most women who pursued legal training [in the early decades of the twentieth century] came […]

by Mary Jane Mossman   In 2018, the Law Society of Ontario reported that 1306 women and 1083 men were called to the bar.[i] That is, more women than men joined the legal profession in Ontario, a pattern that has been repeated in recent years. To what extent does numerical gender equality signal equality in […]