Women Attorneys in New Hampshire: a Changing Perspective
| Jurisdiction | New Hampshire,United States |
| Citation | Vol. 51 No. 1 Pg. 0052 |
| Pages | 0052 |
| Publication year | 2010 |
2010 Summer, Pg. 52. Women Attorneys in New Hampshire: A Changing Perspective
Volume 51, No. 1
Summer 2010
In 1873 when our Bar Association was first incorporated, women were not permitted to practice law in New Hampshire. As with most states, women couldn't vote or be lawyers. Interestingly enough, the first to change was the latter, which made the practice of law arguably, curiously, and somewhat paradoxically progressive: women were admitted as lawyers to advocate constitutional principles, fairness, justice and equity, while denied the fundamental indicia of constitutional equity, the right to vote, for another several decades.
Eligibility changed in 1890 when Marilla M. Ricker, a suffragette, won the right for women to practice law in New Hampshire via Petition of Ricker, 66 N.H. 207 (1890). Yet still, membership lagged, at zero. It was another 25 years before the first woman, Agnes Winifred McLaughlin exercised her right to become an attorney and was admitted to practice in New Hampshire in 1917. Seventy years later however, in 1977, even a unified Bar Association could still claim only 100 female members. It is difficult to believe that during a time so easily remembered: Jimmy Carter, psychedelic fashion, the birth of Chex Mix, and Hotel California, only 100 women belonged to the New Hampshire Bar.
The next 15 years saw women's membership in the New Hampshire Bar proliferate. In 1992, the Bar Association claimed 1,000 women members and its first woman president, Patti Blanchette. By that time the Bar had turned its attention to the challenges women faced in the field. A few years prior, it had formed a task force to measure gender bias believed to exist in the New Hampshire legal community. Its report was published in the New Hampshire Bar Journal (June, 1988) identifying profound professional and economic disparities, and soon thereafter the Bar Committee on Gender Equality was formed.
The Committee on Gender Equality cast a beacon of light on women's issues. Among its chief accomplishments, a study of childcare issues and the development of a resource guide for bar members and spouses entitled A Child Care Primer; the development of a model family leave policy for large and small New Hampshire law firms and the Flexible Scheduling Initiative, "in recognition of the growing number of New Hampshire attorneys who have scheduled flexible working hours to accommodate such needs as family and health care responsibilities...," which was approved by the judicial branch administrative council and distributed to all trial judges and clerks in 2000. In the last ten years, many attorneys have been able to take advantage of the Initiative when necessary, often perhaps without even knowing of its existence or origins.
The Committee zeroed in on the issues of the advancement of women and promoting practices that would assist women with families to pursue the practice of law more successfully. That being said...
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