State Bar of Wisconsin

Women in Wisconsin's Legal Profession: An Historical Perspective

by Joseph A. Ranney

In 1848, when Wisconsin became a state, it was virtually unheard of for women to work outside the home, let alone in the professions. Women were idealized as nurturers and preservers of the human race and as such, morally superior to men; yet at the same time they were regarded as unfit to participate in the world of commerce and politics and compete with men in that world. A Wisconsin territorial legislator expressed the prevailing attitude when he opposed placing guarantees of married women's property rights in the new state constitution:

This attitude changed slowly. In 1874 Lavinia Goodell became the first woman admitted to practice law in Wisconsin when she joined the bar of the circuit court serving her hometown of Janesville. Goodell also was one of the first women admitted to practice in the United States. Janesville had a tradition of liberality as to women's rights. Goodell was sponsored for bar membership by several prominent local lawyers, and Circuit Judge Herman Conger, though he had doubts, could find no legal impediment to her admission. But when Goodell applied for admission to practice before the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1875 she was rebuffed by Chief Justice Edward Ryan, who held that the common law did not sanction the admission of women to the bar. Ryan proclaimed:

In 1877 one of Goodell's Janesville supporters, John Cassoday, was elected speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly. Cassoday secured passage of a bill permitting the admission of women to the bar. In 1879 Goodell renewed her application to the supreme court and this time was admitted; all of the justices except Ryan concluded that the new law settled the issue.

Goodell's admission to the bar showed that Wisconsin men had reached the point where they were willing to tolerate women in the professions; but men still did not treat women seriously in that role. During the century following Goodell's admission, only a trickle of women entered the Wisconsin bar. The work of those women, who are profiled in this book, has gone largely unnoticed and unappreciated until now. This book is an important first step toward filling that gap.

In the early 1970s women began entering the legal profession in large numbers for the first time. They were influenced in part by the modern American women's rights movement and the sweeping women's rights reforms that took place in Wisconsin in the 1970s and 1980s. Wisconsin made its laws gender neutral in 1975, overhauled its divorce laws in 1977, and adopted a community property law system in 1984. Like their male colleagues, women also were attracted to the legal profession because of the cachet that it had at that time as a path to both power and social reform. As recently as 1975 women made up only about 3 percent of the bar; since then, that figure has increased to about 25 percent today.

Joseph A. Ranney chairs the Pioneers in the Law: The First 150 Women Research Committee. Ranney, Yale 1978, is a trial lawyer with DeWitt Ross & Stevens S.C., Madison. He has written several articles on legal and historical topics.

The modern influx of women into the bar has produced a mix of old and new attitudes among men. A 1984 survey by the State Bar of Wisconsin revealed that few lawyers of either sex believed overt sex discrimination was a problem in the legal profession, but numerous stories were told of "disadvantageous treatment" of women. The most commonly reported problems were judges and lawyers challenging a woman lawyer's credibility and capability where they would not challenge that of a man; treatment of women lawyers with undue familiarity, ranging from the use of mildly sexist terms such as "honey" and "sweetheart" to overt sexual harassment; and generally condescending attitudes toward women. Newer women lawyers earned about 15 percent less and more experienced women lawyers about 25 percent less than their male counterparts. The issue of balancing family and job demands was of much greater concern, and was a much more serious problem, for women than for men. Many women lawyers looked for jobs that would allow them to take leave or adjust their work schedules to care for their children and relatives, but few found such jobs.

Court of Appeals Judge William Eich, a member of the 1984 survey committee, concluded that there was a fundamental conflict between qualities traditionally prized by lawyers and those most valued by women. He warned that lawyers of both sexes would have to work hard to develop a workable synthesis:

As the 20th century draws to a close, there are some encouraging signs for women lawyers. Large firms, which traditionally provide the most likely route to wealth and power, have assimilated women at a slightly higher rate than other employers in recent years. The fact that the income gap between the sexes is smaller for new lawyers than older lawyers suggests that traditional barriers to the advancement of women lawyers may be eroding somewhat as more and more women enter the legal work force. The effort to achieve synthesis between traditional legal values and the new perspective that many women bring to the law will likely continue well into the 21st century.

• Back to Pioneers in the Law: The First 150 Women