Ingrid Hillinger: Women on the Faculty

"[I]t was very difficult to be a woman, a young woman, probably anywhere, but certainly Williamsburg... There was blood everywhere in my classroom. I didn’t know what I was doing. It could be really hard. I have a lot of scars. I shed a lot of tears... And at one point Toni [Massaro] took me aside and said, This is not working. And Toni wanted women to succeed. She wanted me to succeed. And so, she told me what to do... And that was a pivotal moment in my teaching career. And that was true of almost all the women at William & Mary. They wanted us to succeed. I attribute the women and my colleagues to getting that. Getting tenure.” -- Ingrid Hillinger, Class of 1976 and Former Faculty, on being a woman on the faculty in the 1980s “The Faculty.” Admissions Brochure, 1987-1988. Wolf Law Library Archives, LSA.1978.001 Ingrid Hillinger (pictured center left) began teaching in 1977. She became, along with Lynda Butler, one of the first two women to be granted tenure at William & Mary Law School. The flexibility of her teaching schedule allowed Hillinger to balance her work life with her home life as a mother of three children and she welcomed the opportunity to live in “two worlds.” At the time this photo was taken, Hillinger was one of six women among the full-time faculty. Now, in 2024, 21 of the 44 full-time faculty at the Law School are women. Listen to Ingrid Hillinger's oral history online.