Born: 18 March 1853, Switzerland
Died: 12 April 1901
Country most active: Switzerland
Also known as: Emilie Spyri
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
Emilie Kempin-Spyri became Switzerland’s first female law school graduate in 1887, but women were not allowed to practise law at the time because they lacked full citizenship. Her proposal to the Bundesgericht, (Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland) asking for a reconsideration of Article 4 of the Federal Constitution that a “Swiss citizen” could also include women, was rejected as “ebenso neu als kühn” (just as novel as audacious). Thanks to her lobbying, however, a new statute was introduced in 1898 that allowed women to practise law in Zürich canton; it was not adopted nationally until 1923, more than two decades after her death in 1901.