Women's Legal Landmarks

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A selection of images from the women's legal landmarks

Women's Legal Landmarks

An Interdisciplinary Legal History Project

The Women’s Legal Landmarks Project is a unique interdisciplinary collaboration involving feminist legal and history scholars identifying, researching and producing critical accounts of key legal ‘landmarks’ (events, cases and statutes) for women in the UK and Ireland.

Each landmark marks an important stage or turning point in women’s engagement with law and law reform. Together they cover a range of topics, including the right to vote, sex discrimination, marital property, forced marriage, prostitution, rape, twitter abuse and the ordination of women bishops as well as the life stories of a number of women who were the first to undertake key legal roles and positions. The Women’s Legal Landmarks Project is led by Erika Rackley and Rosemary Auchmuty.

Read the landmarks

You can read about all the landmarks in our two collections Women’s Legal Landmarks: Celebrating the History of Women and Law in the UK and Ireland (Bloomsbury 2018) and Women’s Legal Landmarks in the Interwar Years: Not for Want of Trying (Bloomsbury 2024).

Not for Want of Trying podcast out now … 

Art work for podcastA new legal history podcast that uncovers key events in women’s legal history during the Interwar years. Join Erika Rackley and Sharon Thompson as they talk to leading experts about key legal landmarks for women and why they still matter today. Listen to our trailer.