SarahAnne Cutler, Mrs. Ward Cleaver, Esq.: Women in the Legal Profession in the 1950s
Or
How to Succeed in Law When You May Not Rock the Boat (and There is No Seat for You) (2000)

Despite the appearance of happiness and prosperity in the U.S. in the 1950s, the decade was rife with subtle tensions and contradictions. Female lawyers during this time were expected to fill two mutually exclusive roles: that of woman, and that of lawyer.

The years after World War II brought unprecedented prosperity. Many believed that everyone could live the good life. The American dream manifested itself in a suburban house, a stay-at-home wife, children, a new car, and new appliances. The decade was characterized by consumption. At the same time, other developments-the atomic bomb, the Cold War and the emerging civil rights movements, among others-created a pervasive sense of anxiety. Despite constant public assurances by politicians that everything was "normal" and life was wonderful, there was a festering sense of unease.

Part of the obsession with normalcy permeating the 1950s was an insistence on maintenance of rigid gender roles-a breadwinning man and his suburban housewife. The focus on marriage and parenthood, the marks of adulthood and normalcy, sometimes became obsessive. Women were advised to pursue personal goals only until marriage. Nevertheless, ever increasing numbers of women entered the workforce to enlarge their personal sense of well-being and to improve their families' ability to afford the trappings of "modern" life. This need to work in order to afford the American dream. Though women were often restricted to traditionally female jobs such as teachers, secretaries and nurses, their presence in the labor force conflicted with widespread cultural expectations that women should stay home.

Women made up 3 - 4 percent of judges and lawyers in the 1950s. Aspiring female lawyers faced a difficult educational and professional road. Women seeking to become lawyers were discouraged from doing so. They were explicitly or implicitly told that they would be outnumbered by men, that it would be nearly impossible to get a job in a firm, and, through the use of gendered pronouns and anecdotes, that law was a man's profession. Women lawyers were encouraged to stick to areas considered "well-suited" to them such as legal aid and government work, and they made only 60 percent of their male colleagues' salaries.

Though the last barriers to women entering law school began to fall during the 1950s, many women in law school at this time felt they had to work harder and perform better than their male counterparts to obtain academic rewards. They were also discouraged in a variety of ways from upsetting traditional institutional norms or rocking the boat. These demands mirrored the pressure to be "normal" that pervaded America in the 1950s. Women of color who wished to become lawyers had to surmount the dual obstacles of sexism and racism.

Women lawyers in the 1950s were not self-consciously feminist. The cultural pressures of the era made it extremely difficult for professional women to be too politically liberal. Their enduring the hardships of legal education and entry into the legal profession, however, was a feminist statement that laid the groundwork for both the women's movement of the 1960s and the deluge of women entering law schools in the 1970s.

 

Revised July 23, 2003 (MD)