A touch of Frost

Cherie Booth QC, wife of the British prime minister Tony Blair, will talk on "The Future for Women in the Law" at a conference on women and law in Dublin Castle next Saturday.

She will join speakers from Ireland, Britain and continental Europe on a variety of related topics marking the 80th anniversary of the entry of women into the legal profession. Almost half of the delegates are coming from Northern Ireland. (The anniversary of the necessary change in the law was last year, but it took time to organise the conference.)

The conference will honour Georgie Frost, the first woman to hold public office from central government in the United Kingdom. Born in 1879 into a family of five in Sixmilebridge, Co Clare, her father was clerk of the petty sessions (court clerk) in that town and nearby Newmarket-on-Fergus. She assisted him for six years before he retired in 1915 at the age of 73, and the local magistrates unanimously elected her to take on his job.

However, they were informed by Dublin Castle that "a woman was not deemed to be a person within the meaning of the Act" that allowed her to do the job. They then gave her a year's contract. She took a case first to the High Court in Dublin and then, successfully, to the House of Lords.

According to Twinkle Egan SC, one of the organisers of the conference, this decision was marked but not publicised - "Their lordships do not recommend this be published", and it remained unpublished for almost 80 years. However, the case was influential in bringing about the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act in 1919, which allowed women to enter the legal profession and the civil service.

Since then, women have entered all branches of the legal profession. But inequalities still remain, and while Moya Quinlan, first woman president of the Law Society, along with Carol O'Kennedy BL, will speak on "Reflections: A Tribute to our Pioneers", Baroness Helena Kennedy QC will address the conference on the theme "The Illusion of Inclusion".

The conference will also be addressed by the President, Mrs McAleese, formerly a leading academic lawyer, and sessions will be chaired by the women judges of the Irish Supreme Court, Susan Denham and Catherine McGuinness, and by the first, and so far only, woman judge of the European Court of Justice, Fidelma Macken.