Margaret Thornton

Rosemary Auchmuty

Ulrike Schultz

Gisela Shaw

In the past fifteen years there has been a marked increase in the international scholarship relating to women in law. The lives and careers of women in legal practice and the judiciary have been extensively documented and critiqued, but the central conundrum remains: Does the presence of women make a difference? What has been largely overlooked in the literature is the position of women in the legal academy, although central to the changing culture. To remedy the oversight, an international network of scholars embarked on a comparative study, which resulted in this path-breaking book. The contributors uncover fascinating accounts of the careers of the academic pioneers as well as exploring broader theoretical issues relating to gender and culture. The provocative question as to whether the presence of women makes a difference informs each contribution.

Gender and Careers in the Legal Academy

Mererid Puw Davies

Beth V. Linklater

This varied and challenging collection of contributions written in German and English surveys a wide range of literature in German from a new perspective, namely that of autobiographical writing by women. In sixteen detailed analyses by an international team of scholars the volume explores theories of autobiographical writing and the heterogeneous ways in which texts by women from the Middle Ages onwards have used autobiographical material. The book addresses theoretical issues and thematic complexes as well as uncovering obscured texts and genres, providing both comparative and individual readings of texts as diverse as the spiritual writings of medieval nuns, diaries of the early modern period, and Holocaust memoirs. The book exposes and re-explores received ideas about women and the practice of autobiographical writing and, in doing so, redefines the terms of current debates in the field of autobiography. Beyond that field, it will appeal to those interested in the broader issues of writing by women, German literature and literary theory.

Autobiography by Women in German

Rosemary Hunter

David Nelken

Based on both quantitative and qualitative analyses, this is the first comprehensive study of women in the world's legal professions.

Women in the World's Legal Professions

Women lawyers,less than a century ago still almost a contradiction in terms, have come to stay. Who are they? Where are they? What impact have they had on the profession that had for so long been a bastion of male domination? These are key questions asked in this first comprehensive study of women in the world's legal professions. Answers are based on both quantitative and qualitative analyses, using a variety of conceptual frameworks. 26 contributions by 25 authors present and evaluate the situation of women in the legal profession in both common and civil law countries in the developed world. 15 countries from four continents are covered: the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, England, Israel, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Finland, France, Italy, Brazil, Korea, and Japan. The focus ranges from judges and public prosecutors, to law professors, lawyers (attorneys), notaries and company lawyers. National differences are clearly in evidence, but so are common features cutting across national boundaries. Experience of glass ceilings and revolving doors is as widespread and as real as success stories of women lawyers pursuing their own projects.

Does gender make a difference to the way the judiciary works and should work? Or is gender-blindness a built-in prerequisite of judicial objectivity? If gender does make a difference, how might this be defined? These are the key questions posed in this collection of essays, by some 30 authors from the following countries; Argentina, Cambodia, Canada, England, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Ivory Coast, Japan, Kenya, the Netherlands, the Philippines, South Africa, Switzerland, Syria and the United States. The contributions draw on various theoretical approaches, including gender, feminist and sociological theories. The book's pressing topicality is underlined by the fact that well into the modern era male opposition to women's admission to, and progress within, the judicial profession has been largely based on the argument that their very gender programmes women to show empathy, partiality and gendered prejudice - in short essential qualities running directly counter to the need for judicial objectivity. It took until the last century for women to begin to break down such seemingly insurmountable barriers. And even now, there are a number of countries where even this first step is still waiting to happen. In all of them, there remains a more or less pronounced glass ceiling to women's judicial careers.

Gisela Shaw

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