The Trials and Triumphs of Being Born Female: Inheriting the Family Title

Should gender matter? In many cases, an uncontrollable (certainly not by the one who was born) circumstance of birth has such long standing consequences. When we bring our babies home from the hospital, should the course of their lives be already determined because of the child's gender? Apparently, this is a phenomenon that affects royalty and commoners alike.

According to a news report in the Daily Telegraph, "It is a layer of aristocracy unique to Britain, and for more than 400 years the title of baronet has been passed dutifully from father to son.

But now, for the first time, women may be able to inherit the title in England under a proposed change to the centuries-old system.

Four baronets have succeeded in adding an amendment to a Bill making its way through the House of Lords that would let them pass their titles to their daughters.

The legislation had originally been introduced to allow dukes, earls, viscounts and other hereditary peers to pass their titles along a female line of succession. However, it left out baronets, prompting a campaign by the four families.

The Bill is known as the “Downton law” after the anomaly of female succession at the heart of ITV’s Downton Abbey, in which the character of Lady Mary, the eldest daughter of the drama’s fictional earl, was unable to inherit the family seat because it had to pass to a male heir."

In this case, fiction has influenced reality....for the better.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10540898/Ladies-who-could-soon-be-a-leaping.html