The Indiana Supreme Court, like courts in many states, has a rule that governs whether out-of-state lawyers can become members of the state bar without first taking the state bar examination. Out-of-state lawyers who practice law in full-time, salaried, traditional jobs are welcome. Those who choose alternative jobs while their children are young are not.

I gladly eschewed the prevailing 60-hour workweek that is common at law firms when I had a child in 1993. I was committed to doing everything possible to give my baby a good start in life, and I wanted to enjoy the relatively short period in my child's life before he went to school.

Still, I didn't retire. I couldn't afford to. I regularly represented domestic violence victims in court. I edited a three-volume series on domestic violence law that was published in 1998 by a respected scholarly press. I lectured on domestic violence at the University of Pittsburgh, where I was a faculty member and research associate. A committee of the Pennsylvania Legislature even consulted me on proposed domestic violence legislation.

So I was feeling extremely confident professionally when I got to America's heartland. In discussions with an Indianapolis law school, it was agreed that I would take steps to begin its first domestic violence law clinic. I felt I had many important contributions to make here. Then I discovered that my legal experience was essentially worthless in the eyes of the Indiana Supreme Court.

It seems that my experience for five of the past seven years failed to meet the court's definition of "actively engaged in the practice of law." The court's rule essentially requires employment on a full-time basis and is heavily biased toward corporate law practice. No one like me had ever been granted admission to Indiana's bar under the rule and I was not to be an exception.

I was shocked, livid. A committee appointed by the court had denied my application to waive into the bar. I appealed to the court, which rejected my appeal, and then confirmed its rejection. After years of representing women who were victims, I now felt like a victim. From my perspective, the Indiana Supreme Court had made an absurd, discriminatory rule and then decided it was fair.

But isn't it obvious to everyone that a rule that requires full-time work disproportionately affects women with young children? I fired off a letter to the leader of the Indiana women's bar to alert her to this outrage, only to discover that she was a member of the initial committee that denied my application. Needless to say, the Indiana women's bar wasn't outraged. I filed a complaint with the Indiana Civil Rights Commission, which ruled in February that it lacked jurisdiction.

When I looked outside the state, I found little support. Letters to national women's and bar groups went unanswered. For the first time since the 1970s, I began to wonder whether the women's movement had stopped moving, having stalled in its tracks sometime in the 1980s. I began to notice that there are a lot more critics of feminists than actual feminists.

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