(456)  PROGRESS THROUGH THE GLASS CEILING

Scots Law News is pleased to draw attention to some quiet but significant recent progress in shattering the glass ceiling over the hitherto manly upper echelons of Scots law.  Caroline Flanagan, a partner in the Dunfermline firm of Ross & Connel, will become President of the Law Society of Scotland in May 2005, the first woman to hold that office.  In the Faculty of Advocates Valerie Stacey QC was elected Vice-Dean on 1 March 2005, only the second woman to be elected as an office-bearer in the Faculty’s history (the previous example was Dame Margaret Kidd QC, who was Keeper of the Library 1956-1969).  And Edinburgh Law School finally got round to appointing, not one, but two women professors: Anne Griffiths (Legal Anthropology from 1 October 2004) and Jo Shaw (European Institutions from 1 January 2005).  Good to see the lawyers catching up with the Church of Scotland (see No 274) and, quarter of a century later on, the office of Prime Minister (although there does seem to have been a bit of a falling away in that area over the last 15 years, and there is no current sign of any return to the paths of virtue).  Perhaps it also behoves an Edinburgh man to acknowledge the presence for many years of women law professors in Glasgow and Dundee.