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Monday, July 14, 2025

Phyllis Maughan: An unconventional life

by

20130712

Phyl­lis Maugh­an has lived what she calls an un­con­ven­tion­al life. And at 83, the at­tor­ney, who still prac­tices out of her Point Fortin of­fice, has no in­ten­tion of re­tir­ing soon. When asked for the rea­son she's kept re­tire­ment at bay dur­ing an in­ter­view at her of­fice re­cent­ly, Maugh­an replied: "What would I do?""I am that type of per­son, ex­treme­ly in­de­pen­dent. I'm in­de­pen­dent al­most to stu­pid­i­ty," she added.Yet, this is the sort of an­swer you would ex­pect from a woman who was called to the T&T bar in 1967 � at a time when she can re­mem­ber on­ly four or five fe­male lawyers be­sides her­self. Ear­li­er in 1967, Maugh­an was called to the bar in the UK af­ter grad­u­at­ing from the Ho­n­ourable So­ci­ety of the In­ner Tem­ple in Lon­don. She es­ti­mates that on­ly 25 per cent of her class was fe­male at the time.

Maugh­an's jour­ney to law school was al­so un­con­ven­tion­al. When she be­gan study­ing law in 1964, Maugh­an was a wife and moth­er of three, who had worked as a pub­lic ser­vant for a lit­tle over a decade.The Na­pari­ma Girls High School alum­na had hopes of be­com­ing a pro­ba­tion of­fi­cer, but af­ter some friends sug­gest­ed law to her, the idea didn't seem far­fetched."It wasn't that I had a burn­ing de­sire for law but I saw an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­vance my­self," said the great-grand­moth­er.In Eng­land, Maugh­an "kept close" to the T&T High Com­mis­sion and worked when she could to fund her stud­ies."It wasn't easy be­cause I was up there alone with no friends. My fam­i­ly was in Trinidad. It was re­al­ly quite tough. In those days we were still ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a lot of colour prej­u­dice so even though I had ex­pe­ri­ence in the civ­il ser­vice in Trinidad it was dif­fi­cult to find place­ment."

In 1968, Maugh­an, who grew up near La Ro­main, moved to Point Fortin with her fam­i­ly af­ter her hus­band be­gan work­ing with Petrotrin. Maugh­an was able to open a prac­tice, but she had to deal with the sex­ist at­ti­tudes of male lawyers and al­so sex­ist laws - like the in­come tax re­quir­ing her hus­band to pay on her be­half. "You would think this is a pro­fes­sion in which women would have equal rights but there was dis­crim­i­na­tion. We (fe­male lawyers) fought for what­ev­er we have at­tained." She al­so had to bal­ance rais­ing a fam­i­ly with prac­tis­ing law, an area where Maugh­an says "fe­male lawyers suf­fer."

Even though women in law have made sig­nif­i­cant gains, Maugh­an doesn't nec­es­sar­i­ly ad­vise that young women join the pro­fes­sion in the cur­rent so­ci­etal land­scape. "I think that the law as a pro­fes­sion is los­ing its po­si­tion in so­ci­ety. In a de­vel­op­ing coun­try, the law as a pro­fes­sion has not as­sumed the role that it should have."Maugh­an be­lieves lawyers should be at the fore­front of the push for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form.

A full life

�2 In ad­di­tion to be­ing a lawyer, wife and moth­er, Phyl­lis Maugh­an has al­so been in­volved in pol­i­tics and char­i­ty. She was a Unit­ed Labour Front can­di­date for rep­re­sen­ta­tive of La Brea in the late 1970s and for­mer vice pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Co­terie of So­cial Work­ers. Her in­ter­ests in both pol­i­tics and char­i­ty, said Maugh­an, were in­her­it­ed from her fa­ther who was a stead­fast trade union­ist. Oth­er ma­jor in­flu­ences on her "per­son­al con­nec­tion" to "work­ing class pol­i­tics" are CLR James and Au­drey Jef­fers.Nowa­days, Maugh­an oc­cu­pies her spare time with read­ing and yo­ga, which she de­scribes as the "purest re­li­gious pur­suit to which I have been ex­posed."All in all, Maugh­an's life has cer­tain­ly been un­con­ven­tion­al, but there isn't any­thing she would change. "There were times when I had to con­form. My life has not been easy, but I have en­joyed it and in ret­ro­spect I am com­fort­able with it," she said.


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