Virginia Law Women

PRESERVING OUR STORIES Virginia Law Women

Virginia Law Women was founded in 1971 to establish a formal body for female students and to advocate for greater gender diversity at the Law School. Fifty years later, the organization remains active and provides social and networking opportunities for law students.

On October 23, 2020, the UVA Law Special Collections staff met virtually with Mary Jane McFadden ’74 to record her recollections for the Women’s Oral History Project (see page 26). McFadden co-founded the Virginia Law Women (VLW) in 1971. M ary Jane McFadden ’74 attended The Ohio State University in the late 1960s, at the height of student protests against the Vietnam War. She was in her second year when the National Guard opened fire at Kent State University, killing four student protestors. After Ohio State shut down in response, McFadden served as a student member of the negotiating team tasked with determining conditions for reopening.

“We had to speak up because the generation before us, the World War II generation, wasn’t going to do it. So that was my college experience, which was not the typical college experience for a lot of people. And when I graduated, I thought going to law school was a way of gaining voice, being able to advocate. And it was.”

McFadden selected UVA Law because it had an excellent reputation and an attractive campus. She had followed the 1969 lawsuit to bring coeducation to UVA’s undergraduate school and began to investigate the status of women at UVA Law. Although the school had been admitting female students for 50 years, McFadden discovered through the Department of Education’s public statistics that female admission at the Law School was “very low.”

McFadden decided to send a letter to every incoming and current female student at UVA Law the summer before her 1L year, asking if they would be interested in forming a coalition. She received only two responses, both of which discouraged her from drawing attention to women students. Shortly after arriving, however, McFadden ran into Diane Hermann ’72, in the women’s lounge in the Clark Hall basement. Hermann loved the idea of a women’s organization. They suggested the idea to Dean Monrad Paulsen, who was equally supportive.

To attract members, McFadden and Hermann posted announcements around Clark Hall advertising the group’s first meeting and spread the word to their peers. Ten students attended the first meeting and, after some debate on the group name, they agreed on Virginia Law Women. Elizabeth Trimble ’73, Law Women’s first president, and Ellen Bass Brantley ’73 were among the organization’s founding members.

The group had three main goals: address sex As VLW worked to improve conditions for discrimination in the admissions process, women at UVA Law, they also took part in the eliminate discriminatory interview practices national conversation on women’s rights. Mcamong visiting job recruiters, and increase Fadden and a handful of other members atthe number of women on the full-time facul- tended a “Woman In and Under the Law” conty (at the time, Frances Farmer was the only ference at Duke University in October 1971. woman). McFadden and the VLW began with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, then a professor the matter of admissions and took the issue at Rutgers University, was the keynote speakto Dean Paulsen. er. Following the conference, Hermann sug-

“We advocated for all objective admis- gested to Dean Paulsen that the Law School sions policies. If you’re going to offer a course on women and the law, which have cut offs, if you’re going to became part of the curriculum that have standards, then you had “There was a spring and for many semesters to apply the same standards very broad-based afterward. This course, while to women and men. ... I and exciting feminist no longer offered, laid the think they did do a better movement within law groundwork for other classes job the next year, because schools all over the devoted to women and the there were twenty women in country. [It] was a great law, such as Professor Anne my class, [and] there were time to go to school.” Coughlin’s “Feminine Jurisprufifty-two the following year.” Mary Jane McFadden ’74 dence” course, which Justice

As for the job recruitment Ginsburg addressed during her process, McFadden recalled that 1997 visit to UVA Law (pictured some firms refused to interview women at all. on cover). Others would announce during an interview In February 1973, McFadden recalls she that the firm did not hire women. Still others attended the vote in the Virginia General Aswould ask questions of women never asked of sembly on the Equal Rights Amendment. men such as, “Do you intend to get married?” McFadden remembers her surprise and awe VLW’s outspoken activism against this treat- when she learned that the older women sitment encouraged the administration to ban a ting next to her were some of the original sufnumber of firms from recruiting at UVA Law, fragettes. In an emotional exchange, one sufalthough the issue persisted. fragette said the last time she had been in that same room was to advocate for the right to vote.

Virginia Law Women, 1977, Ann Margaret Juterbock ’77 (left) and D. Elizabeth Cuadra ’77.

Virginia Law Women, 2019.