Women at the Bar – Past, Present & Future: an IWD 2024 reflection by Chief Master Shuman
In celebration of International Women’s Day 2024, look back at our ‘Celebrating 100 years of Lincoln’s Inn Women’ digital exhibition and read the speech delivered by the Inn’s Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) Committee Chair, Karen Shuman, at the unveiling of our Mercy Ashworth Portrait on 23 September 2023

“Do not just survive but thrive”.
The Rt Reverend Rose Hudson-Wilkin, CD MBE, Honorary Bencher of Lincoln's Inn
“Tonight we unveil the Mercy Ashworth portrait, a collaboration with Spark 21. I am delighted to have the charity founder, Dana Denis-Smith, with us. The Mercy Ashworth portrait was composed by multimedia artist Rocco Fazzari using individual photographs of Lincoln’s Inn members who identify as women. The photographs were taken at celebrations in London, Birmingham and Manchester. It serves as a powerful symbol tying the Inn’s rich heritage to its commitment to a more inclusive future.
I also want to say how grateful I am to Dunstan Speight, our librarian at Lincoln’s Inn. Not only for the research that he undertook for this speech but also for everything he does to support the work of the Equality Diversity and Inclusion Committee.
So, tonight is a celebration of women at Lincoln’s Inn – past, present and future.
The struggle by women to be accepted into the ranks of the legal profession as equals to men started over 100 years ago. In January 1920 Marjorie Powell and Gwyneth Bebb were admitted to the Inn. That was following a long campaign, the passing of the Sex Disqualification (removal) Act 1919 and an unedifying period in the Inn’s history when it rebuffed every attempt by women to be admitted to the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn. Whilst the 1919 Act was a compromise it enabled women to join professions and professional bodies, to sit on juries and be awarded degrees. Had Gwyneth not died shortly after child birth in October 1921 she may well have been the first woman called to the bar. Instead the first women called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn were Mithan Tata and Mercy Ashworth on 26 January 1923. That was shortly before Cornelia Sorabji, called in June 1923, the first woman to practice law in both India and Britain. I spoke about Mithan and Cornelia, in January 2023, when this project was launched.

I stand here having been appointed in 2021 as the first woman Chief Chancery Master. I was only the second woman chancery master in December 2017. The irony is not lost on me that I have a title that is associated with men.
Chief Master Shuman
The focus tonight is on Mercy Ashworth, after whom the lecture theatre is named. Mercy was the daughter of a hat manufacturer. She was educated at University College, Aberystwyth, and read moral sciences at Girton before lecturing at Homerton College. In 1905 she travelled to India working as a schools inspector until her return to England before the outbreak of World War I.
Mercy was called to the bar at the age of 54. She had chambers in Lincoln’s Inn and practised on the South-Eastern Circuit, but sadly little is known about her practice. The only mention of her in caselaw is to a landlord and tenant case in 1934, Trickebank v Brett.
Indeed, not that much is known about the women who were called to the bar around this time, although we do know there were very few. In the 19 years between 1920 and the outbreak of World War II, only 78 women were admitted to Lincoln’s Inn.
In 1928 the first woman barrister instructed in a murder trial was Enid Prosser of this Inn. In 1933 the Bar Council permitted women to practise under their maiden names. There were still prejudices though. Hannah Cross, the daughter of a barrister, was called in 1931. She applied to 5 or 6 chambers for pupillage. She was rejected due to the insuperable problem of the chambers having no suitable toilet facilities for a woman to use. This was long before the days of gender neutral toilets. She eventually obtained a place at 1 New Square on her undertaking to use the public lavatories in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
In 1945 there were two firsts, the first woman Deputy Recorder, Dorothy Dix of Inner Temple and the first woman Deputy County Court Judge, Edith Hesling of Gray’s Inn. The first women to take Silk were Helena Normanton of Middle Temple and Rose Heilbron of Gray’s Inn, both in 1949.
It was 42 years after the first women were called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn that the first woman was appointed to the High Court bench, Elizabeth Lane of Inner Temple. She was also the first woman bencher. Although as Dunstan rightly reminds me, technically Her Majesty Queen Mary was made a bencher of Lincoln’s Inn in 1945. It was not until April 1986 that the first non-royal woman bencher of Lincoln’s Inn was elected, Mary MacMurray. She was joined in December of that year by Elizabeth Appleby, who became the first non-royal women Treasurer in 2009.
It was not until 1974 that a woman at Lincoln’s Inn took silk, Patricia Galloway Coles, who had been admitted to the Inn in 1948. She was the seventh woman QC in England and Wales.
In 1986 Lincoln’s Inn had two women appointed silk at the same time. Janet Smith who went on to become the second woman Treasurer in 2012, having been appointed as a High Court Judge in 1992 and assigned to the then Queen Bench Division. The other Mary Arden, was the first woman appointed to the Chancery Division in 1993 and the third woman appointed to the Supreme Court in 2018.
In 2017 Julia Macure of this Inn was appointed as the first woman Senior Presiding Judge of the Court of Appeal. In the same year Brenda Hale of Gray’s Inn was appointed the President of the Supreme Court.

Whilst there is a move to parity in the tribunals, the lower courts and entry to the Bar – there is a long way to go still in the senior courts and the senior profession. If we do not solve retention and progression the Bar will not be fit for purpose, it will not reflect the society in which we live.
Chief Master Shuman
I stand here having been appointed in 2021 as the first woman Chief Chancery Master. I was only the second woman chancery master in December 2017. The irony is not lost on me that I have a title that is associated with men. Frequently parties will write in assuming that I must be a man, articles about judgments I have given refer to the male pronouns. I have to put up with the riposte, well what do you want to be titled, Chief Mistress. I simply wish to have a title that accurately and clearly describes what I do to the court user.
I wonder if Mercy and her contemporaries would have thought – job done, that women would be in a stronger and better position 100 years later, that there would be gender parity.
They would be pleased, I am sure, with the statistics at entry to the barrister profession. There is almost gender parity.
In 1923 only 5% of those called to the Bar by Lincoln’s Inn were women. By 1953 that had risen to a heady 6%. In 1983 29%, 1993 38% and 2003 49%. Figures for 2022 were 44% but appear to be relatively stable.
However, when I read the 2022 update to the Bar Standard Board’s Income at the Bar by Gender and Ethnicity research report I am utterly dismayed. Over the last 20 years the gap between men and women’s earnings has widened. Women barristers earn 34% less than men. How can it be right that a person is paid less because of their gender, or because of their ethnicity? In contentious chancery work women continue to earn 39% less than men. In personal injury that is 53%.
That is why the publication of this research by the BSB, the work of the Bar Council – with its modernising the Bar programme, the work of the Inns, of the Inns of Court Alliance for Women, of which I am a co-convener, is vital.
That is why events such as tonight and the outstanding work that Spark 21 does are so very important. Spark 21 was responsible for the project “First 100 years of women” and have now launched the next chapter entitled “the Next 100 years”. It is a charity founded to celebrate, inform and inspire future generations of women in the professions.
Whilst tonight is rightly a celebration of women at Lincoln’s Inn – progress has been slow, so very slow. For all of us who identify as women we have a very long way to go before we are no longer defined by our protected characteristic or characteristics.
Armed with first-hand experience of how I was treated when I had children, how choices and assumptions would be made for me without input by me, I am not blinkered to the struggles that women face to achieve fairness and equality in a still male dominated world. Whilst there is a move to parity in the tribunals, the lower courts and entry to the Bar – there is a long way to go still in the senior courts and the senior profession. If we do not solve retention and progression the Bar will not be fit for purpose, it will not reflect the society in which we live. The Inn itself must continue to change and to do so at a faster pace. We must be part of an inclusive society at this Inn where we call out and no longer tolerate casual micro aggressions and discrimination.
Take this speech as a call for you help, support, guidance and strength, it is as needed today as it would have been in 1923. We need more Andy Murray’s who are prepared to stand up and call out discrimination and sexism wherever it exists.
I will finish by adopting the words of The Rt Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin, the Bishop of Dover, and an Honorary Bencher of Lincoln’s Inn: “Do not just survive but thrive”.
Scroll through our ‘100 years of Lincoln’s Inn Women’ digital exhibition
This is a shortened version of an exhibition that was written by Inn member, academic and co-author of ‘First 100 Years of Women in Law’, Katie Broomfield, who we are incredibly grateful to.









