ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out the masculinist ethos which underpinned the creation of the High Court as an institution, and indeed, the wider legal system which has reflected the same ethos. Women’s exclusion from the drafting of the Constitution shaped the document that emerged in important ways—it meant their concerns and perspectives were not adequately represented and it meant that women were not envisaged as exercising legal or political authority. This exclusion from building Australia’s foundational legal institutions necessarily sets the scene for examining the conditions of their later entry or ‘letting in’ to the legal profession itself. Tracing the formal removal of these barriers, the chapter provides a brief history of the extent to which women’s admission to the legal profession was vigorously denied by those who already had power within it. This history of the “persons” cases and the subsequent enabling legislation which enabled women’s entry into the legal profession) provides important insights not only into the contingent and conditional nature of women’s eventual access to legal authority but also, the extent to which changing the formal rules will not necessarily disrupt the gendered status quo.
