The struggle for equal rights required pioneers
For many years the legal profession at Copenhagen University was closed to women, and the path for the first women who sought to study law, was extremely difficult.
When we mark Women’s Day every year in March, we do so partly by taking stock of how far we have come and partly by looking back on the turning points in history. Last year, the University of Copenhagen (UCPH) celebrated the 150th anniversary of the first women enrolling at the university – a landmark moment, without a doubt. However, it took 30 years from Nielsine Nielsen graduated as a doctor until the first woman graduated with a law degree. In this article, we take a closer look at the first female lawyers who paved the way for women's access to legal education – and to a justice that was not previously available to women.
First female lawyer denied access to court
Nanna Berg (later married Kristensen-Randers) was the first woman to enrol in Law at UCPH. She graduated from the Faculty of Law in 1887 with an exam.jur degree – a degree that has since been abolished and which had a lower status than a cand.jur degree. Shortly afterwards, she was hired by a law firm in Copenhagen, but when she first appeared in Copenhagen City Court, she was denied access to the courtroom because she was a woman.
The head of the law firm where Nanna Berg was employed, Svend Høgsbro, ended up taking Nanna Berg's case all the way to the Supreme Court, where it was ultimately overturned on the grounds that, even though there was nothing in the legislation about gender, the exclusion of Nanna Berg: ‘be said to be in accordance with the principles prevailing in the legislation regarding the exclusion of women in general from holding public office’ (not official translation), Supreme Court, 9 October 1888.
This meant that there was nothing more either Svend Høgsbro or Nanna Berg could do, and the career of the first female lawyer was over before it had even begun.
Henny Magnussen gave women a voice in court
17 years after Nanna Berg's abrupt exit from the City Court Henny Magnussen succeeded in becoming the first Danish woman to obtain a law degree in 1905. The following year, the Danish Parliament passed a special law that overturned the ruling against Nanna Berg and enabled Henny Magnussen to become the first female solicitor in Denmark.
This marked the beginning of an impressive legal career for Henny Magnussen, who became a prominent figure defending women's rights and speaking up for women in the legal system – see example in the box below.
Today, both the university and society in general are a far from the reality that Henny Magnussen and Nanna Berg faced. And even though these two women alone did not drive the social changes of later generations, they still deserve to be remembered for their work and for their courage in taking great personal risks to give the women of their time access to better representation in the legal system and legal education.
Their efforts have been crucial in ensuring that Danish society has even more talented jurists, lawyers, and legal researchers. And their struggle reminds us that equality is not something that happens by itself – it is achieved because someone fights for it.