Bar Codes: Women in the Legal Profession.

Margaret Conrad is a history professor at Acadia University and editor
of They Planted Well: New England Planters in Maritime Canada.

Although women have flooded into the legal profession over the past 40 years, they have yet to achieve equality with men in status and income. Why, after more than four decades of feminist achievement, is such an outcome still possible? This study gives voice to 110 female lawyers in Ontario who agreed to be interviewed about their careers. For the most part, the interviewees tell us what we already know—that women face hurdles in reconciling their personal and professional lives and in competing in testosterone-laden environments where billings are recorded in six-minute segments—but the value of this study is that it allows other voices to be heard, including women who find joy in the law and flourish in a competitive context. Nevertheless, what remains when one finishes reading this monograph is a sense of disbelief that such sexist structures and shenanigans still prevail in a profession that peddles justice.

Professor Leiper makes no claims to the representativeness of her sample. The first 19 interviewees were her daughter’s colleagues and the rest were chosen in a “random” fashion to cover other areas of Ontario. Together, we are told, the group provides a broad cross-section of ages, social backgrounds, and ethnic identities, but these categories are not the focus of the study. Rather, the focus is the way in which women, in all their diversity, must adapt to formal and informal professional codes of conduct that have developed over centuries. Chapters focus on issues relating to masculine voice, dress, and deportment that female lawyers must engage (a de-sexing experience that can be troubling to some, empowering to others), their law school experience (unbearably sexist for many), their styles of legal practice (often rooted in an ethic of care), and the time crunch (clocks, calendars, and cycles) that complicate a life-career balance. The analysis is rooted in theoretical literature ranging from Michel Foucault (disciplinary practices) and Julia Kristeva (motherhood) to Carol Gilligan (gendered voices) and Pierre Bourdieu (social and cultural capital). And yet, theory does not overwhelm the narrative, which provides a thoughtful and nuanced portrait of a generation of legal pioneers in Canada.