An Iconoclast Blazes Trail For Woman Lawyers

Wednesday, 31 December 2008 19:00

Among the pantheon of leaders who crashed the doors and shattered the glass ceiling that held women back from the professions and business, few have done as much crashing and shattering as Clara Brett Martin (1874-1923) of Toronto. At a time when it was almost unheard for women to enroll in university science or technical programs, Martin won a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics from Toronto's Trinity College, at age 16. Three years later, she petitioned the Law Society of Upper Canada for permission to become a student lawyer. The big wigs ruled that the law did not permit women lawyers. With the support of such people Ontario Premier Oliver Mowat, that was changed by a new law passed by the Ontario legislature on April 13, 1892. Martin became a student lawyer. In 1897, she became the first woman lawyer in the globe-spanning British Empire—the trail blazer for probably more than a million women lawyers in more than a score of countries.