It’s been 100 years since women were admitted to the legal profession. In that century women have progressed: from law student to professor and dean; from candidate attorney to lead partner; from pupil to senior counsel and judge. This century of female practice is marked by a rich multiplicity of roles: women have used their legal training to achieve any number of path-breaking firsts. We are prosecutors and public defenders, in-house corporate counsel, magistrates judges, Cabinet ministers, and chief regulators. We serve government, business, civil society and our communities.

The 100More campaign looks to celebrate each of these achievements and to help nurture a new generation of women lawyers so that we might use our law degrees in support of whatever our ambitions might be. As a decentralised campaign, looking to activate participation from a wide array of institutions and initiatives – big or small — in which women lawyers feature, the campaign will reflect the depth and diversity of the parts played by women lawyers since their first admission 100 years ago.

100 years ago, the Women Legal Practitioners Act 7 of 1923 was promulgated by publication in the Government Gazette (The Union of South Africa Government Gazette Extraordinary Vol. LII: 10 April 1923: No. 13). The Act contained a single section:

‘Women shall be entitled to be admitted to practise and to be enrolled as advocates, attorneys, notaries public or conveyancers in any province of the Union, subject to the same terms and conditions as apply to men, and any law in force in any province of the Union regulating the admission or enrolment of persons as advocates, attorneys, notaries public or conveyancers shall henceforth be interpreted accordingly’. 

10 April 2023 marks 100 years since this significant alteration in the opportunities available to women in law.

To mark the centenary of the Act’s passage and to foster the commitment to creating even more opportunities for women in law, we create the 100More campaign.

The aim of this campaign is to celebrate how far we have come as women in law, to acknowledge the diverse paths taken by women in law and to accelerate our progress as women in law.