Bar Codes offers compelling insights into the balancing act of career and family among professionals, specifically how the careers of women lawyers are shaped, undermined, or even derailed as personal biographies confront rigid professional structures. Jean McKenzie Leiper challenges the elitist and exclusionary culture of law practice through rigorous and nuanced interpretation of in-depth interviews with over one hundred lawyers. This book will be of wide interest to scholars of the sociology of work and occupations, legal education, and feminist theory, as well as deserving of serious attention by lawyers, law professors, and law society and bar association leadership. -- Fiona Kay, co-editor of Diversity, Social Capital, and the Welfare State

Bar Codes examines women lawyers' attempts to reconciletheir professional obligations with other aspects of their lives. Itcharts the life courses of women who constitute a first wave -- anavant-garde -- in a profession designed by men, for men, where formalcodes of conduct and subtle cultural norms promote masculine values. Athorough analysis of women’s encounters with this cultureprovides some answers and raises more questions about the kinds ofstresses that have become extreme in the lives of many Canadianwomen.

This book adds to mounting evidence of marked gender differences inopportunities for advancement, demonstrating that many men still enjoyfreedom from domestic responsibilities while women continue to facemultiple barriers in their quest for career success. As this studyshows, change is under way in the legal profession and women cansucceed in reaching high levels within it, but the law remains, in manyways, a masculine institution.