President: Helen Melrose | Vice-President: Hon. Margaret Wilson DCNZM
The idea of forming a women lawyers group developed out of the environment created by the Women and the Law Legal Research Foundation.
In 1984, Hon. Margaret Wilson DCNZM proposed that a women lawyers organisation be established to address concerns facing women in the legal profession and the wider social and political environment. Together, Margaret Wilson, Helen Melrose and Nancy Dolan established AWLA.
AWLA was to be a professional network to support and promote women in the law. The minutes of its inaugural meeting record, AWLA was to “gather information, conduct research, advocate women’s interests, and by doing so work for the advancement of women within the profession and in society generally.”
At the time, the primary concerns were equal employment, pay, and advancement opportunities. The group aimed to establish a network across the Auckland region to help overcome the barriers women faced in the legal profession. A key motivation behind AWLA was the desire to support the advancement of women to the highest levels of the profession.
The inaugural meeting was held on 16 April 1984 at Old Government House, Auckland University. Helen Melrose was elected as AWLA’s first president, a committee was elected, the constitution was drafted, and AWLA swung into action. In her book, Without Prejudice: Women in the Law, Gill Gatfield describes:
“Margaret Wilson, in an introductory speech [at the inaugural meeting], spoke of the need for an association ‘where women could socially support each other and use their skills as lawyers, not only to help themselves but also other women in the community’. The timing was obviously right. Within a month, the new association had received forty-two applications for membership and by May 1987, 268 of the 329 women in practice in the Auckland region had joined” (Gill Gatfield Without Prejudice: Women in the Law (Brooker’s, Wellington, 1996) at 115).