Women in law

By Cassidy McNea

In Ontario, more women than men are receiving their law license, according to a recent survey.

The report from Law Society of Ontario shows 54 per cent of lawyer licenses were given to women in 2017. In fact, women have held the majority for the past four years. However, fewer women are in senior leadership positions, according to a report from the University of Toronto, showing women earn 93 per cent of men’s salaries across all stages of their career.

Ken Marley, a criminal defense lawyer for 29 years, said law school is for the best and the brightest and students can be any gender, as long as they are qualified.

“My law school class was probably 40 per cent women to men, but over time I could see it become more equal,” said Marley. “I think what happens to a lot of women is they don’t stay in the practice as long as men do. I think some people still see the profession as male dominated.”

In 2017, the University of Windsor conducted a student diversity survey and results showed 59.4 per cent of their law students from the 2020 class identified as female.

Kayla Smith is a second year law student and representative for the women in law group at the University of Windsor. She said historically women have been disadvantaged in law. This is shown even in the architecture of the law building at the university.

“If you come to the Windsor law building you’ll find we have a fraction of the amount of washrooms for women as we have for men,” said Smith. “So we know it wasn’t always the case that we had this amount of women applying.”

In Canada, women were not legally recognized as “persons” until 1929 when the Persons Case was brought to trial by a group of women called The Famous Five. The goal of the case was to allow women to join the senate. Ultimately, they won their case and the country began recognizing women as people. The case was led by Emily Murphy, Alberta’s first female judge.

The reason enrollment and law licenses for women are increasing could be due to the “feminization” of higher education.

Reports show women may be surpassing men in education due to increasing labour market opportunities. There are also incentives such as scholarships for women only which stem from women historically having fewer opportunities.

There are a number of reasons why women enter the legal profession, including flexibility. according to Vicky Featom Tuquero who oversees legal affairs for the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority. Featom Tuquero is a University of Windsor faculty of law alumni and said she wanted to get into law because it gave her freedom and the ability to balance family and her career. She said this could also be the reason women are not moving up to higher positions in large firms.

“It probably has to do with women’s availability,” said Featom Tuquero. “If you do have a family you don’t have hours to hours to spend on face time with partners.”