ABSTRACT
In 1893, women lawyers from around the world joined forces, overcame significant resistance, and meaningfully participated in the World’s Columbian Exposition. Rather than focus their efforts on representation within a single pavilion, these women participated in the Fair through three venues. The first involved women lawyers working with other women professionals, including doctors and teachers, to advance women’s position within the learned professions and to garner support for their law reform campaigns to secure full emancipation and equality for all women. The second venue involved women lawyers working within the International Congress of Women to use the social capital of its Council to create a new coalition of power and influence for women to secure equal rights across the globe. The third venue involved women lawyers infiltrating the male-dominated Congress on Jurisprudence and Law Reform to highlight women’s legal interests and establish their place within the legal profession. This chapter examines the ways that women lawyers united nationally and transnationally. It assesses the commonality of the legal harms women suffered across borders and the international coalitions women lawyers built with other women professionals and activists. The chapter also explores women lawyers’ position within the male-dominated legal profession. It concludes with an assessment that this three-tiered strategy—uniting with other women professionals, uniting with clubwomen, and permeating the male legal profession—modeled the approach women law activists followed throughout the twentieth century.
