Women in law

In a first-of-its-kind effort to bring women law professionals to the United States to study legal issues concerning women, 12 Ukrainian lawyers, judges and prosecutors spent three weeks in Delaware in June attending ELI's Women in Law program.

Ukrainian women in law participants met with Delaware Attorney General M. Jane Brady (sixth from left)

Funded by the United States Information Agency and co-hosted by the Delaware Department of Justice, the program responded to a call, made at the 1997 Women's Vital Voices Conference in Vienna, for improving the legal literacy of women through education and outreach programs.

"The visible presence of women in significant and powerful positions," said Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who addressed the conference, "has a real and tangible effect on the lives of other women striving to advance both personally and professionally."

In addition to attending classes taught by ELI legal studies coordinator Christopher Wolfe on the American legal system, the participants met with colleagues in state and federal courts, law firms, law schools and government and nongovernmental agencies, including Christine McDermitt, law professor at Widener University; the Honorable Jane Roth, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit; Delaware Attorney General M. Jane Brady; Senator Joseph Biden; Judge Sue Robinson of the Delaware Federal District Court and Judge Carolee Grillo of the Delaware Family Court.

Topics discussed included women's human rights, equal protection and gender discrimination, domestic violence, family law and children's rights.

One of the goals of the program was to help participants plan for a national conference for women legal professionals, held in September in Simferopol and Sevastopol, Crimea, Ukraine.

In September, Attorney General Brady, attorney Olha N. M. Rybakoff of Delaware's Department of Justice, her mother, Olha M. Rybakoff, interpreter for the Women in Law program, and Chris Wolfe attended and spoke at the conference. Many of the Ukrainian participants who had been in Delaware's program also addressed the conference.

The attorney general, who was the keynote speaker, addressed over 100 attendees on the issue of leadership for women, including advocacy and political involvement, as well as the issue of women in law. "I hoped to encourage a few more women," she said, "to enter the legal profession in Ukraine."

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