No doubt I risk tutting, sneering and/or wrath in pointing this out (again … see this old post  and this even older one) but … I am not sure that some parts of the world of legal history academia are aware of the concept of the manel and the general acceptance that diversity is a good thing …

Oh look – while the ladies may be allowed in to give the odd seminar, the speaker for the big lecture at the Cambridge Centre for English Legal History is … yup, another bloke …

It is rather worrying that there are no women legal historians (or historians of law, or former lawyers known to give a good talk…) isn’t it? I definitely can’t think of several.

[Voice offstage: Ah life was simpler in the good old days …

We would definitely never plan a big project with only men nowadays, would we …Oh …]

GS

12/10/2021

… and also … from this week’s reading (17/10/2021)

Another indication of the worrying lack of women who are able to do these things:

D Ibbetson, N Jones and Nigel Ramsay (eds), English Legal History and its Sources (CUP 2019) Chapters by males: females = 17:3.

…and one I’m looking at today (21/11/2021)

Apparently the massive gender imbalance amongst legal historians is an issue right across Europe (and in those working on European legal history). By my reckoning (and I will correct if this is inaccurate), Pihlajamäki, Heikki, Markus Dirk Dubber, and Mark Godfrey (eds), The Oxford Handbook of European Legal History (Oxford, 2018) has the following stats: editors – three men, no women; chapters by one or more men – 44, and by a woman – 4 (including two by the same woman).

Absolutely nothing remarkable in that at all.