Progress

Something to brighten your weekend: feeling grateful for U.S. women's opportunities for legal education and careers [Clippings]

Submitted by Anna

University of Chicago 3L (and Mom-in-Law-School) Lag Live meditates on a New York Times article about the Middle East's "Education City."

[W]hat struck me the most was a section on the second page titled "Opportunities for Women." To quote some of the article: "Education City represents broad opportunities for women, in a nation where many families do not allow their daughters to travel overseas for higher education or to mix casually with men. Cornell stresses, proudly, that it was Qatar’s first coeducational institution of higher learning. The female students are very much aware of their new opportunities... 'I don’t want my father’s money or my husband’s money,' said Maryam al-Ibrahim, a 21-year-old second-year student at Virginia Commonwealth. 'I want to work for a private company and be myself, and I would like to become someone important here.' Mais Taha, a Texas A&M petroleum-engineering student, glows as she talks about her classes, including Reservoir Fluids--hydrocarbons, she explains sweetly--and Drilling."

I may not ever "glow" while talking about constitutional law, but I am grateful for the opportunity to attend law school--and much more than that, I'm grateful that it doesn't often occur to me to be grateful.

Amen to that.

When I was eight years old my brother and I were in our shared bathroom getting ready for bed. We were discussing what we would do when we were "grown up," and I declared that I wanted to be an astronaut. My brother looked at me and told me that "girls cannot be astronauts." Upset and confused I immediately went to tattle tell on my older brother. My mom then sat both of us down and told us that we could do anything in this world that made us happy and that nothing could stop us. As an eight year old little girl, this satisfied the worries that my brother had implanted in my mind.

Cracks in the Glass Ceiling

Submitted by Rigel S. Massaro

Each of us brings to our job, whatever it is, our lifetime of experience and our values.
Sandra Day O'Connor

If we are to achieve a richer culture--one rich in contrasting values--we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.

Margaret Mead

Last month I completed my first year of law school at the University of Arizona, where 50% + of the student body is female and all of our deans are women. I am currently interning at Consumers Union, where the 90% of the office is female. Just today I attended the annual luncheon of Equal Rights Advocates, where 850 supporters celebrated the 35th anniversary of Title IX. Today is a great time to be a woman entering the legal profession: the way has been paved by amazing women leaders (heroines abound!), and there is still much work to do.

I am lucky.