Woman in Law

Celia Wells

Description

A frank and revealing account which distils the essence of women's career challenges and highlights the issues women continue to face.

Sujets

• Lettres et linguistique
• Reino Unido
• Ideology
• United Kingdom
• Great Britain
• Royaume-Uni

Informations

• Publié par: Waterside Press
• Date de parution: 11 septembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781910979778
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

A Woman in Law
Reflections on Gender, Class and Politics
Celia Wells
With a Foreword by Nicola Lacey
Copyright and publication details
A Woman in Law: Reflections on Gender, Class and Politics
Celia Wells
ISBN 978-1-909976-66-5 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-910979-77-8 (Epub ebook)
ISBN 978-1-910979-78-5 (Adobe ebook)
Copyright © 2019 This work is the copyright of Celia Wells. All intellectual property and associated rights are hereby asserted and reserved by the author in full compliance with UK, European and international law. No part of this book may be copied, reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, including in hard copy or via the internet, without the prior written permission of the publishers to whom all such rights have been assigned worldwide.
Cover design © 2019 Waterside Press by www.gibgob.com. Photo with the kind permission of Rob Wells.
Main UK distributor Gardners Books, 1 Whittle Drive, Eastbourne, East Sussex, BN23 6QH . Tel: [phone]; [e-mail] ; www.gardners.com
North American distribution Ingram Book Company, One Ingram Blvd, La Vergne, TN 37086, USA. Tel: [phone]; [e-mail]
Cataloguing-In-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library.
Ebook A Woman in Law: Reflections on Gender, Class and Politics is available as an ebook and also to subscribers of Ebrary, Ebsco, Myilibrary and Dawsonera.
Published 2019 by
Waterside Press Ltd
Sherfield Gables, Sherfield on Loddon,
Hook, Hampshire, RG27 0JG.
Online catalogue WatersidePress.co.uk
Table of Contents
Foreword v
About the author vii
The author of the Foreword vii
Acknowledgements ix
Dedication xiii
Introduction xv
Part 1: The Accidental Communists 19
1 Getting Started 21
2 Class, Gender and Politics 29
3 Families — My Bigamous Grandmother 33
Savery v King 40
4 Social and Economic Transitions 47
5 Communism and the Carritt Connection 51
‘The Party the Party’ 59
6 After the War 63
7 The Not So Secret Life of a Seven-year-old 69
8 Town and Gown 77
Part 2: Life, Law and Feminism 83
9 Becoming a Woman 85
10 Becoming a Law Professor 87
11 Law and Life 93
12 A Woman Law Professor 99
13 Collisions — Expectations, Enabling and Endings 109
Destructive and disordered behaviours 111
My eulogy at Derek’s funeral 112
14 Where Did I Come From? To Oxford via Wolf Hall, St Pancras and Essex 117
References and bibliography 119
Appendix I: Women Law Professors — Negotiating and Transcending Gender Identities at Work 124
Appendix II: The Decline and Rise of English Murder: Corporate Crime and Individual Responsibility 177
Index 197
Foreword
Nicola Lacey
W hat shapes the choices we make in our lives, and the feelings we have about the institutions in which we work? These apparently simple questions have been explored in terms of the frameworks of a range of disciplines — social psychology, psychoanalysis, sociology, history; in the fora of the rich genres of biography, autobiography, the novel; and through a variety of social practices ranging from formalised therapies through to informal exchanges between family and friends. Yet our grasp of the relevant dynamics remains elusive.
Nowhere is this more so than in relation to academic careers. Perhaps the idea that what we work on and how we work on it and feel about it is shaped by wider and deeper factors than criteria of scientific interest and importance sits uncomfortably with the established understandings of the nature of the academic enterprise. If ideas have affective and historical conditions of existence, so the anxiety goes, that might undermine the claims to truth or impartiality on which scholarly authority are thought to rest. Or perhaps the increasing focus on ‘objective’ outcomes as measures of purpose, meaning and success are inhospitable to the deep introspection and reflection needed to recover the connections between past experience and present intellectual interests or relationships.
In this beautifully written and searingly honest book, Celia Wells therefore gives us a rare resource: an emotionally articulate and deeply considered reflection on how these threads of connection have shaped her own personal and intellectual life: on how the past casts its light and shade on the present; on how the personal and the professional are constantly interwoven and indeed rewoven as we grow and learn; on how what troubles, engages, excites or intrigues us owes so much to our early experiences and encounters.
In Celia’s case, in addition to the influence of her parents’ political commitments and commitment to education, two strands in particular emerge as significant. The first is the way in which the vectors of power in relation to gender and class both exert structural constraints and infuse cultural norms, shaping the extent to which the academic environment can genuinely include and respect women and colleagues and students from working-class backgrounds. The second is the long shadow cast by mental ill-health and addiction.
I read Celia’s book with particular interest, not only because of our long personal and intellectual friendship, but also because I share her commitment to uncovering these connections. They first forced themselves on my attention in the mid-1980s, as I struggled with the experience of being the only woman Fellow at New College Oxford and sketched out a research life within a discipline which my unruly imagination has always made a somewhat uneasy home. My interest deepened 20 years later when I worked on the life of legal philosopher H L A Hart. This latter experience taught me that even the most apparently established, elite and distinguished academics can be beset by insecurities and feelings of being an outsider, even as their intellectual drive and sensibilities are underpinned by their life experiences. The discovery of this enduring inner struggle both deepened my admiration and respect for Hart, and illuminated for me the importance of the effort to be open about what Celia calls collisions and contingencies: the dynamics which both hamper us yet also enable us to do what we do and to become — as well as to understand and accept — who we are. The courage with which she has handled the challenges posed by each of these should inspire anyone who reads her book. It stands as an eloquent testimony to the power and importance of life writing as an intellectual and political endeavour which belongs at the heart of the academy.
July 2019
About the author
Celia Wells OBE is Emerita Professor of Criminal Law at the University of Bristol. An early exponent of the need to understand law in social, economic, gender and other contexts, in 1995 she became the first woman law professor at Cardiff University. A graduate of Warwick University she also taught law at Newcastle-upon-Tyne and as a Visiting Professor at the University of Sydney. A long-term editorial board member of Criminal Law Review , her other roles have included joint editor of Legal Studies , consultant to the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) on corporate liability for corruption, advisor and expert witness to Parliamentary Committees on corporate manslaughter and bribery, and member of the International Bar Association task force on Illicit Financial Flows and Tax Abuse. She is the author of Corporations and Criminal Responsibility (2001), Negotiating Tragedy (1995) and Reconstructing Criminal Law (with Nicola Lacey, latest edition 2010). Presented with the OBE in 2006 Celia Wells was President of the Society of Legal Scholars from 2006–2007.
The author of the Foreword
Nicola Lacey CBE is School Professor of Law, Gender and Social Policy at the London School of Economics. From 2010 until September 2013 she was Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, and Professor of Criminal Law and Legal Theory at the University of Oxford. She has held a number of visiting appointments, most recently at Harvard Law School and at New York University Law School. She is an Honorary Fellow of New College Oxford and of University College Oxford. She is a Fellow of the British Academy, served as a member of the academy’s Policy Group on Prisons, which reported in 2014, and is its nominee on the Board of the British Museum. In 2017 she was awarded a CBE for services to Law, Justice and Gender Politics.
Beyond her book with Celia, Nicola’s publications include In Search of Criminal Responsibility: Ideas, Interests and Institutions (Oxford University Press, 2016); Women, Crime and Character: From Moll Flanders to Tess of the d’Urbervilles (Oxford University Press, 2008); The Prisoners’ Dilemma: Political Economy and Punishment in Contemporary Democracies (Cambridge University Press, 2008) and A Life of H L A Hart: The Nightmare and the Noble Dream (Oxford University Press, 2004).
Acknowledgements
I have benefited from advice and guidance from many people and institutions. In particular I thank John Easom, Keele University Alumni Officer; the Oxford History archive; the Raphael Samuel Archive at the Bishopsgate Institute; Kevin Morgan; Richard Whiting; Colin Carritt; Becca Leathlean; Sally Wheeler; Jo Shaw; Tammy Hervey; Ulrike Schultz; Hilary Sommerlad; Rosemary Auchmuty; the Society of Legal Scholars Research Grants Committee (who funded my attendance at) and the participants in the Schoenburg Workshop. Parts of this work were first presented at the Special Meeting ‘Gender and Careers in the Legal Academy’ of the Gender in the Legal Profession Sub-group of the International Working Group for Comparative Studies of Legal Professions in Schoenburg, Germany in May 2016. Many thanks to Jessica Sutcliffe for permission to reproduce the photographs of my parents taken by her mother, Helen Muspratt, and to my daughter’s partner, Sebastian Bustamante Brauning, for his help with scanning them