Assigning Blame

For more than a year, Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress spearheaded research about the way Americans live and work.  The resulting comprehensive Shriver Report, http://awomansnation.com, released earlier this month, found that for the first time in our nation’s history, women make up half of the workforce and mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families.  The website showcasing the report boldly touts, “The battle of the sexes is over.  Men and women overwhelmingly agree on what they want in life, and how they view their roles in marriage, as parents, and in their jobs.”

Just a week after the Shriver Report’s release, Joanne Lipman reacted with a rather frank and insightful New York Times Op-Ed piece, “The Mismeasure of Woman”, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/opinion/24lipman.html.  Ms. Lipman takes issue with the suggestion that we are now living in a woman’s world because, as she sees it, progress for women has stalled and even taken a step backward in recent years.  After citing a litany of examples (women still earn 77 cents for each dollar earned by a man, only 15 women run Fortune 500 companies, women make up almost half of all associates but only 18.3% of the partners in law firms), she explores why this has happened. 

Ms. Lipman traces the root of the decline to the aftermath of 9/11.  She contends that, as the “war in Iraq tore America apart” and the “Internet gave everyone a soapbox” in which the “louder, the more offensive the better”, the online and then mainstream conversation about women degenerated.  She backs up this accusation with several examples - examples which, admittedly, I am shocked by, now that I see them assembled in print, but which I very well wouldn’t have even noticed hearing them live.  What this all reveals, Ms. Lipman concludes, is that while the numbers might have improved, the attitudes have not.

Perhaps Ms. Lipman’s comments offer some new insight into the questions that IWL (along with numerous other organizations and commentators) has been exploring for the last several years.  Questions like, why are there so few women judges, equity partners, rainmakers, Bar Commissioners, etc.?  For decades, women attorneys have made up a significant portion of the legal workforce, yet they occupy a much smaller fraction of the positions at the top of the legal career path.

 A recent survey by the National Association of Women Lawyers confirms that little to no progress has been made in the last year: “Fourth Annual Survey on Retention and Promotion of Women in Law Firms” http://www.nawl.org/Assets/Documents/2009+Survey.pdf (survey);
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS134533+26-Oct-2009+BW20091026 (article summarizing survey findings). The survey’s findings include:

• Women were much more likely to be affected by recent layoffs because they were more likely to hold part-time jobs;
• Pay disparity between men and women still exists at all levels;
• Few women are significant rainmakers;
• Women are still under-represented in the upper levels of law firms. (”For over 20 years women have graduated from law schools and started careers in private practice at roughly the same rate as men, yet women continue to be markedly under-represented in the leadership ranks of firms. Women constitute fewer than 16% of equity partners, only 6% of firm managing partners, and barely 15% of the members of a firm’s highest governing committee - percentages which have not changed from 2008 and have barely advanced since the Survey began exploring these data in 2006.”)

There are so many partial explanations for this phenomenon, and they all have some legitimacy:  the mommy track; the reluctance of women-versus men-to promote themselves; the catch 22 of too few women leader role models; remaining vestiges of overt discrimination; and others. 

I think we need to add to this list:  our own attitudes toward women.

Have we individually and as a society become numb to demeaning comments about women?  Do we laugh politely when we hear a gender-based criticism of opposing counsel?  Do we unwittingly attribute unfair stereotypes to women attorneys-like indecisive, flighty or bitchy?  Do we subconsciously start with the assumption, barring evidence to the contrary, that a man is more qualified than a woman to be a judge, or Attorney General, or managing partner? 

All of us-men and women-need to carefully examine our own prejudices and vigilantly guard against the casual intrusion of such prejudices (whether ours or others’) into our daily interactions.  This is essential to maintain the integrity of our legal profession.  And, it is essential to eliminate an unseen but ever-present impediment to women attorneys’ leadership track.

Submitted by Deborah Nelson
Member of the Board of Directors, Idaho Women Lawyers, Inc.
Partner, Givens Pursley LLP