Vol. 8 No. 4 (April 1998) pp. 180-181.

DISSONANCE AND DISTRUST: WOMEN IN THE LEGAL PROFESSION by Margaret Thornton. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996. 323 pp. Paper ISBN 0-19-553661-4.

Reviewed by Carla Thorson, Department of Political Science, UCLA. E-mail: cthorson@ucla.edu.
 

As a Professor of Law and Legal Studies at La Trobe University, Margaret Thornton offers a new and in depth perspective on women in the legal profession. DISSONANCE AND DISTRUST examines the experiences of professional women in the jurisprudential community in Australia. Despite the dramatic change in the profile of students entering law schools, Thornton argues that women still have not been fully accepted as equal citizens in legal circles. Today women represent approximately half of the law student body throughout the English-speaking world, but the gender composition of the profession as a whole does not reflect this shift.

Why might this be true?, Professor Thornton asks. She rejects mainstream arguments that explain away the gender gap or ignore it all together. Some have argued that measuring the success of women in professional life requires a different scale and the incorporation of different factors, making it difficult to draw useful comparisons with men. Thornton’s work acknowledges this thesis, but suggests that this difference in measures of success cannot account for the dichotomy she has identified in the Australian legal community. Regardless of how talented the women who enter public life are, Thornton argues, they are denied the authority enjoyed by similarly situated men.

Her alternative explanation focuses on the notion of the "fictive feminine:" that there is a normative understanding of feminine which has been engineered as the "other" or opposite of masculine. Thornton traces this understanding historically through philosophical and political texts, and suggests that the masculine norm is invariably portrayed in a positive light. Men are well ordered and rational. Women, by default, are not. This fictive representation of women as disorderly and non-rational effectively denies them the same authority in the legal world.

Thornton’s thesis offers an insightful way of evaluating women’s roles, not just in the legal profession but in public life more generally. It is interesting if only for its identification of the often-implicit values and norms that may influence social behavior and gender bias. Thornton does not, however, effectively set out the task to prove this thesis. Rather, she attempts the less lofty goal of rebutting the claim that the legal profession has become feminized and succeeds. The methodology employed in the study is primarily semi-structured in depth interviews with women at various stages of career development. This approach would appear to address only half of the argument. Interviews with men in the profession and particularly those in authority would have markedly improved the veracity of this work.

Even if one rejects her thesis, Thornton’s work is valuable in and of itself for the detailed look at women in the legal profession in Australia. As she herself argues, mainstream legal textbooks commit a sin of omission rather than commission by consigning women’s roles in legal history to little more than a footnote. Thornton’s work attempts to rectify this oversight by including an historical narrative on the first women in Australian law and tracing the historical trends influencing the entry of women into the legal community. Thornton analyzes the reasons why women are attracted to the legal studies, how women fare as scholars and teachers of law, and their status in legal practice as lawyers in private firms and in government. Finally, she explores issues of body politics in the professional environment.

For those interested in the legal profession or women’s roles in public life more generally, this work is very valuable and rich in detail. The notion of the fictive feminine deserves more attention and further study.
 


Copyright 1998