Women and the Jury

For centuries, state laws barred women from jury service on the theory that women were too fragile to participate in public life and needed protection from the “indecent” aspects of criminal trials.

Three states—Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina—statutorily barred women from serving on juries well into the 1960s.

• The first woman allowed to vote in America was Lydia Taft of Uxbridge in 1756.

• The first woman attorney in Massachusetts was Lelia Robinson of Boston in 1882.

• The first female Assistant District Attorney (1927) and the first female judge (1930) in Massachusetts was Emma Fall Schofield of Malden.

• The first women were selected by a town to be summoned for juror service by Uxbridge in 1922.

• The first women served as jurors in Massachusetts in 1950.