Gender, Space, and Ritual: Women Barristers, the Inns of Court, and the Interwar Press

One of the last exclusively male professions in the United Kingdom, the English bar, resisted women’s presence until 1919 parliamentary legislation prohibited gender-based disqualification. Following the efforts of Helena Normanton, the first female barrister to practice in England, to insert herself into the bar’s masculine preserve, this article reveals a more complicated interwar feminism than previous scholars have suggested. Overall, women deliberately de-emphasized their femininity to accord with the Inns of Court’s masculine culture and increase their chances of professional success. This did not prevent campaigners like Normanton, however, from pursuing an active feminist agenda. Focusing on architectural space and embodied ritual, this article explores the disadvantages created by spatial separations between male and female members of the bar. It also highlights the interwar press as a representational space for ambivalent debates over women’s place in the legal profession.