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Trigger warning: this blog post contains upsetting content regarding rape and sexual assault.

Sometimes the law needs updating as it’s outdated and doesn’t reflect the society it represents; however, this of course takes time to do. Here are a few examples of how, until recently, women have been treated in prejudicial manners because of the law.

1. Marital rape

In 1736, Sir Matthew Hale stated that the husband of a woman can’t be guilty of raping his wife. The justification for this was that through the act of getting married, a woman gave her consent and was unable to retract that consent. He was a chief justice in the Court of the King’s Bench of England and a man with some real power.

This was reiterated in 1822 when a barrister said that a husband can’t be guilty of raping his wife. In fact, it wasn’t until 1991 that the court ruled against this and acknowledged that a woman doesn’t give consent simply by getting married. This was a landmark case, but it took until 1991 for this change to come into effect.

2. Women training as lawyers

Women weren’t allowed to train as lawyers until the 1919 Sex Disqualification Act was implemented. The Law Society refused to allow four women to sit their exams in 1913 because they weren’t deemed to be ‘persons’ in the 1843 Solicitors Act.

More recently, the Solicitors Regulation Authority reported that, as of October 2022, women make up 53% of solicitors in law firms.

If you want to learn more about women training in the legal profession, check out this LCN Says on women who changed the industry and this Feature on women at the Bar.

3. Tampon tax

Until 2021, VAT could be found on all sanitary products. However, since the UK left the EU, the UK is no longer bound by EU laws, which imposed a 5% rate taxed on sanitary products. This has since been abolished now the UK has autonomy over this decision. Felicia Willow, then chief executive of the Fawcett Society, said in 2021: “It’s been a long road to reach this point, but at last the sexist tax that saw sanitary products classed as non-essential, luxury items can be consigned to the history books.”

4. Women and taxes

Continuing with the all-important topic of tax, women only started to be taxed independently from their husbands in 1990, following a 1986 green paper entitled The Reform of Personal Taxation. Prior to this, a married woman’s income would be added to their husband’s income and taxed accordingly. This is just one way that women were seen as add-ons to their husbands and not as individuals in their own right.

5. Equal pay

It seems abominable to think a man and woman could do the same job and the woman get paid less just because they’re a woman. Is there any logic here? No. However, it wasn’t until the Equal Pay Act 1970 that it was made illegal to treat women any less favourably than men, either in terms of pay or in working conditions.

Change has taken place and is still taking place today. But this is slow and the law and the world of politics have the power to be altered further. It’s important to remember what’s changed for women to recognise what still needs to change and how we need to amend the law to protect women and increase equality for future generations.