From Rural Nicaragua to Corporate America, Women Change Landscapes

My experience as a woman entering the legal profession is perhaps as much about history as it is about the future.

In part, my entrance is shaped by my pre-existing commitment to using the law to advance equality where the nexus of race, gender, disability, and other qualities currently locates inequality, both de facto and de jure. I will start with an example of this commitment, and the view it affords: working in Nicaragua, I would often assess the results of our organization's small grants to feminist projects. One day on such an assignment, equipped with a two-minute brief on the project's circumstances and stated goals, I boarded the bus and set out for the community's presentation on its new patios (household gardens). Before even sitting down for the presentation, it was evident that "successful" was a weak word for what $2,000 had wrought in this 100-person town: the women's voices rang with pride; children ran in and out of the new school building funded partially by profits from the gardens; the landscape's abundant produce bespoke the excellent planning and care with which the project had been executed.