There are two Women’s Legal Landmarks collections.

The first collection, Women’s Legal Landmarks: Celebrating 100 Years of Women and Law in the UK and Ireland, edited by Erika Rackley and Rosemary Auchmuty was published by Bloomsbury in2018.

2019 marks the centenary of women’s admission into the legal profession in the UK and Ireland. Coming only a year after the Representation of the People Act 1918 gave (some) women the parliamentary vote, the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 encouraged feminists and others to look forward to a new era in which women’s voices would be heard in law, women’s concerns addressed, and women’s injustices and inequalities righted. The centenary in 2019 offers an opportunity to mark and assess women’s progress toward these hopes.

Despite the upcoming centenaries, academic work on women’s legal history in the UK and Ireland is relatively scare, while other writings are often anecdotal, uncritical or written from a ‘top-down’ perspective. This volume seeks to set the record straight with engaging and accurate accounts written by over 80 experts in their fields. The landmarks cover a range of topics, including the right to vote, sex discrimination, 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. Together, they demonstrate women’s agency and activism in the achievement of law reform and justice.

As the first scholarly anthology of its kind, Women’s Legal Landmarks we hope that it make a significant contribution – and be key reference source – to the academic literature in feminist legal history in and beyond the UK and Ireland.

The second collection – Women’s Legal Landmarks in the Interwar Years: Not for Want of Trying – edited by Rosemary Auchmuty, Erika Rackley and Mari Takayanagi was published by Bloomsbury in 2024.

Women’s Legal Landmarks in the Interwar Years shines new light on 33 legal landmarks, many forgotten today, that affected women in England and Wales between 1918 and 1939.

It considers the work of feminist activists to bring about legal change which benefited – or aimed to benefit – women. Areas explored include property, inheritance, adoption, marriage, access to health care, criminal law, employment opportunities, pay, pensions and political representation. It also examines campaigns by key women’s organisations, and assesses the impact of early women lawyers and politicians.

While some of the landmarks effected change during this period, others provided the foundation for measures in later decades. Together the landmarks demonstrate that far from being a relatively quiet period of British feminism, the interwar period played a key role in ongoing fights for recognition, representation and justice.