Equal Pay Day: Scholarship on Advocacy and Equity

Today, Friday, April 18, 2008 is Equal Pay Day. The National Women's Law Center is encouraging bloggers to voice their support for the Fair Pay Restoration Act. Lest you think the wage gap doesn't reach attorneys (after all those law firms have lock-step and hour-based associate salaries and partners are just paid according to their client base, right?) study after study has confirmed that gender pay equity continues to be a goal and not a reality in the legal profession as well.

Recently Judge Kaye and Anne Reddy reported that as recently as November 2007, the National Association of Women Lawyers found that, of thirty-five firms willing to report compensation by gender, the average median compensation of a male equity partner was almost $90,000 higher than that of a female equity partner, $27,000 higher than that of a female nonequity partner, and $20,000 higher in the of counsel position. 90% of firms report their top earning member is a man.

I've written on the motherhood wage gap - that is the penalty working mothers pay when they have children that cannot be attributed to reduced time or commitment in the office. National longitudinal studies by the US Department of Labor have documented a statistically significant drop in the wage trajectories of women with children not experienced by fathers.

Blogging for a cause is a growing trend and part of a more general recognition of the power blogging can have for women in particular!

Girls Being Girls: A Lot Less Steamy Than Boys Being Boys

Julia Baird's article, Girls Will Be Girls. Or Not. Why aren't more powerful public women caught up in sex scandals?, explores an interesting side of the gender power imbalance: why "are so few women in politics embroiled in tabloid tales?" There are few obvious female counterparts to the Eliot Spitzers and Jim McGreeveys (aka "Luv Guvs") of the political world. Of the "handful of minor scandals involving women in public office in America," the majority arise from "love affairs, not casual—or commercial—liaisons." The lack of "indiscretion" by female politicians leads to a call for more women to be elected to office. For example, former White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers, states: "I'm confident predicting there would be fewer sex scandals if women were in power … I don't think Hillary Clinton is going to be hitting on the intern."

Is it just that women dislike cigars and blowing four grand on casual affairs, or are the lack of female power peccadilloes telling of a deeper gender imbalance? For example, Baird notes that "while there are 86 women in Congress, and one in four state politicians is female, few are prominent enough to attract savage media scrutiny" in contrast to the men who fill the majority of elected positions. If it's not about the numbers (fewer powerful women, fewer high profile scandals), then maybe it's about the stigma. As Baird notes, "historically, women who stray have suffered more than men who do. Men are often forgiven more easily—their dalliances are considered a lapse, an uncontrollable urge." This stigma can have a higher cost for powerful women. When Edwina Currie, a British politician, disclosed her affair with a male politician, "only a third thought worse of him, half thought worse of her."

Over at Jezebel, another theory is put forward that "men don't find female power erotic": "female politicians don't have more affairs because men don't see them as more powerful, or find that power to be attractive. Young guys want nothing to do with Hillary Clinton because power and experience and age are not valued in women in our culture." The conclusion being that it isn't "a question of whether women cheat less or are better people; it's that a female politician would have less opportunity to cheat in the first place, as the men around her are unlikely to throw themselves at her."

It's interesting that you do see May-December couples with an attractive younger man and older woman, but most if not all of those couples involve a very beautiful woman (Ashton and Demi, Eva and Tony)--it's not like these guys are grabbing onto decrepit sugar mamas. On the other hand, there are still too many examples to list of rich, older, unattractive men with beautiful younger women (Donald and Melania, Anna Nicole and 90-year-old husband, etc.) I for one am not really in the market for a much younger man who wants to live off my fortune, so I don't much care if poweful women isn't an image that plays well while shopping for arm candy. But, on a deeper level, it is troubling that powerful women are sexual kryptonite and that women pay a higher social price for "being girls" in the way that boys like to be boys.

Does Sexism Still Exist?

The word on the street seems to be that if you think you're the victim of sexism, you are either paranoid or looking for excuses for a non-gender-related failing. I myself am guilty of blaming sexism--when I blogged about a male colleague who changed one of my recommendations at work behind my back, I bitterly recounted the story to friends with the added conclusion: "he never would have done that if I were a male colleague." But, maybe he would have. How can I really be sure? Likewise, Jessie posted on a new law review article that indicates how little progress has been made in the last 20 years in equalizing pay and partner positions between women and men in firms. Is the cause sexism? Is it women's own choices to opt out of the profession? Are those choices based on a sexist society? What does that even mean? Again, how can we know for sure?

I drive myself crazy thinking in circles, and I am left wondering how we can ferret out (and exterminate) sexism when it's often so deeply undercover in our workplaces or whether sexism is already dead. Hillary's campaign for the White House has really brought this issue home. Did sexism damage her campaign or not? I read an interesting article today by Chris Reed about all the completely gender-neutral reasons (except, perhaps, for Obama's ability to generate more excitement than Clinton, which may have something to do with a sexist tendency to value men's points more than women's) that Hillary's campaign faltered. I read this article, and I nodded to myself that these points logically explained why voters would reject Hillary regardless of her gender. However, just because there are gender-neutral explanations for why something is so, it doesn't necessarily mean that those logical, neutral reasons actually had a causal relationship with the outcome. For example, just because we can logically explain why women would be less likely to make partner because of their own personal choice to take time off to raise families, it doesn't mean that this neutral, logical reason is the actual cause of women's less than stellar represenation as firm partners.

Though we don't often have an insight into the behind-the-scenes thoughts of our work colleagues, we do have a lot of insight into the behind-the-scenes thoughts of at least some voters. For example, we've all probably heard about the Hillary nutcracker, complete with spikes between the legs; the video "How It Will Feel if Hillary Gets Elected", which features a woman kicking a man repeatedly in his most sensitive area (the assumption being that a woman in power is somehow emasculating to men); or the variety of anti-Hillary t-shirts, with mottos like "Hillary's a c*nt" or "Hillary is not a c*nt, a c*nt is useful" or "Face it bitch you're fu**ed" with a dog with Obama's face mounting a dog with Hillary's face. These are only a few examples. I'm not even a Hillary supporter, and I felt sick and insulted and defiled reading these t-shirts as they seemed to denigrate all women and not just one presidential candidate. By point of comparison, the exact same website featured anti-Obama t-shirts with slogans much more specific to his own qualities as a candidate like "The Audacity of Inexperience" and "Barack OBummer" and "Empty Suit." It is nearly impossible to read these t-shirts in a way that says something derrogatory about all men whereas the anti-Hillary t-shirts make points using stereotypes about women in general. If sexism were dead, why would it be funny to watch a video of a woman kicking a man in the balls in relation to a woman running for president? Why would everyone get a good laugh from displaying a nutcracker in the shape of a female presidential candidate? I'm not saying that Hillary's problems are due entirely to sexism, but I have no doubt that this campaign has brought sexism out of its dark closet. It's out there, ladies, and it's ignorant to think that we as lawyers aren't affected by it in our jobs the same way that Hillary is affected by it in hers.

Blog Watch: Daily Kos Tallies Women in Top Elected Offices

Daily Kos has tallied up the number of women in top elected positions in response to Hillary Clinton's comment about Iowa and Mississippi never electing any. Kos notes that a number of other states could be added to that pathetic list if you excluded the widows who succeeded their late-husbands and Lt. Governors who succeeded their bosses mid-term.

Would people respond better to what you say if you were a man?

In an article on women's leadership styles, Nicholas Kristof references research that "women, compared with men, tend to excel in consensus-building and certain other skills useful in leadership." In explaining why women have not had more success in achieving positions in government despite these strengths, Kristof hypothesizes that "in the televsion age, female leaders also have to navigate public prejudices." These "prejudices", as it turns out, are of the sort that affect women lawyers as well. Kristof cites the "Goldberg paradigm," an attribution arising out of a study in which people read an article or speech with one group of readers told that the speech is by a man while the other group is told that the speech is by a woman. Dishearteningly for those of us women who speak in public in front of juries or clients, "in countries all over the world, the very same words are rated higher coming from a man."

[More after the jump]

Judge Boone's Reprimand Also Demonstrates Progress

When news broke that Maryland Judge W. Kennedy Boone was reprimanded in January for calling three African-American women lawyers “the Supremes” and advising the defendant to “get an experienced male attorney,” people were dismayed. How could this still be happening? It’s one thing when Imus does it, but a judge.... Looked at through the lens of history, however, the Boone case is also a story of tremendous progress in addressing gender bias in the courts.

As Director of the National Judicial Education Program to Promote Equality for Women and Men in the Courts (NJEP) at Legal Momentum, I know that until recently the spectators in the courtroom where this happened would have laughed, the lawyers would not have felt able to complain, the judicial disciplinary board would not have reprimanded the judge and the judge would not have written a mea culpa or met with the three lawyers individually to personally apologize. When Legal Momentum inaugurated NJEP in l980 with the goal of eliminating gender bias in the courts, judicial comments like Judge Boone’s were nothing unusual. For example, when the New Jersey Supreme Court Task Force on Women in the Courts – the first of the supreme court task forces that emerged in response to NJEP’s judicial education programs – conducted its attorneys survey in the early eighties, one woman wrote that at a calendar call where she was the only woman in the courtroom, when she asked to be heard at second call because she had problems with her case, the judge responded that of course she had problems, “women are always the problem,” and everyone laughed.

Over the years NJEP and the gender bias task forces documented incidents like this across the country and explained that they were not just personally insulting to the women involved, but undermined their professional credibility and consequently their ability to represent their clients and their clients’ credibility. This led court systems nationwide to condemn this kind of behavior, and when the American Bar Association in l990 revised its Model Code of Judicial Conduct, the code on which state codes are based, it adopted a new Canon that directed judges not to manifest bias or prejudice on a list of grounds including sex, and not to permit those under their direction and control to do so. It was this canon, among others, that the Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities ruled Judge Boone violated when he made his “undignified and disparaging”remarks.

The disciplining of Judge Boone in this case demonstrates that the norms for acceptable behavior toward women in the courts have changed. Obviously incidents like these still happen, but far less often, and when they do, the targets can do something about it.

Lynn Hecht Schafran is the Director of the National Judicial Education Project, which is part of Legal Momentum.

Southern Ms. Part IV: Lawyerettes

I'm often hesitant to tell people I'm an attorney. Suffice it to say the achievement of graduating from law school and passing the bar is dampened by finding oneself the butt of many many jokes. But in Memphis, I find myself asserting my professional status more because otherwise I find folks assume I'm a secretary.

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

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.

Maryland judge calls trio of black female lawyers 'the Supremes,' recommends client get a male lawyer [Clippings]

County Circuit Judge W. Kennedy Boone called three black female lawyers "the Supremes" in court. He also advised a defendant to get "an experienced male attorney." Generously, Boone has recused himself from further cases tried by the three lawyers.

[Hat tip to Women in Law Daily.]

Is there such a thing as professional anger for women?

I was intrigued by the series of comments about showing emotion as a female lawyer in a professional context. I was especially struck by the posts that talked about how crying was the response that came through when what the women really felt was anger. One woman wrote that when