Document Type
Working Paper
Publication Date
1-23-2026
Language
en-US
Abstract
Between 1964 and 1973, women’s representation in full-time law school programs rose fivefold, from 3.7% to 20.1%. This paper examines whether Vietnam War draft policy contributed to this increase. In 1968, men enrolled in law school lost eligibility for 2-S student deferments, threatening law schools’ tuition revenues and incentivizing schools to admit more women to stabilize enrollment. To test this mechanism, we construct a school-by-year dataset of enrollment counts split by women/men and full-time/part-time status. Using a uniform adoption difference-in-differences design, we find that women’s representation rises by 2 percentage points in full-time programs relative to part-time programs (which were far less exposed to draft risk). This effect represents a 45% increase over women’s baseline representation of 4.5% in 1967. We further show that, after the draft, law schools more connected to undergraduate institutions transitioning from all-male to coeducational experienced larger increases in women’s enrollment. A shift-share analysis indicates that a one-standard-deviation increase in exposure to these coeducation transitions raised women’s first-year enrollment shares by 1-2 percentage points, highlighting the joint role of draft policy and expanding educational opportunity in accelerating women’s entry into law.
Recommended Citation
Thomas Helgerman & Benjamin D. Pyle,
Women in Law and the Draft
(2026).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/4223
