Report Finds Women Pay More than Men for Health Insurance

This spring, the National Women’s Law Center issued a report entitled, “Turning to Fairness:  Insurance Discrimination Against Women Today and the Affordable Care Act.”  The report found that women are the victims of discriminatory practices when purchasing health insurance and that these practices will end nationally only when the federal Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) is fully implemented in 2014.

According to the report, only 14 states ban or limit charging women different insurance premiums than men (“gender rating”) in the individual health insurance market, while 17 states ban or limit gender rating in the group health insurance market.  The National Women’s Law Center estimates that as a result of gender rating, women as an aggregate spend about $1 billion more than men for health insurance annually.  The report also provides that there is a large difference between what women are charged within a state and nationwide, making actuarial justification for the difference difficult.  For example, the report found that one health insurance plan in Arkansas charges 25-year-old women 81% more than men, but a similar health insurance plan in Arkansas only charged 10% more.

What No One Tells You Before You Go to Law School: You're Entering a Sexist Profession

Maybe I was hopelessly naive, but it really never occurred to me that I'd be treated differently in the legal profession because I was a woman.

I spent the several years before law school in a heavily male-dominated profession (software), and never had any issues. I'd done a previous graduate degree, same thing.

All my life, I'd been "one of the guys" and I'd never had much interest in stereotypically female pursuits such as shopping and talking on the phone. Frankly, I decided at a young age it was a better long-term plan to be smart than to be cute, so I went down the brainy path and never looked back. (I even went to a boarding school for science and math dorks!)

So, it was pretty shocking to enter law school.

My First Hint that Something Was Different

Like many soon-to-be-law students, I did some research on what I was getting into. I ordered a few books, talked to lawyer friends, and started browsing law student message boards on the Internet.

OMG. I have NEVER in my life seen such vitriolic, misogynistic hatred.

The idea that the people writing this stuff were lawyers, or law students, or soon-to-be law students was incomprehensible to me. I simply refused to believe it. Until I showed up to class, read over a few shoulders, and realized some of “these people” were actually my new classmates.

Hum…not great. But I chalked it up to a few bad apples and moved on.

Ms. JD Joins Levo League in the First Ask For More Day!

As you may know, April 17th is #EqualPay day, the day that women's salaries from the previous year catch up to their male colleagues.  Here at Ms. JD, we believe it's high time for that to change.  We want to see it change by empowering you to ask for more.  To do so, we've teamed up with our friends at the Levo League and a number of their partners to provide you with tools for the first ever Ask For More Day. 

We've heard it over and over: women don't earn as much as men do for the same work. The meme-like ratio of women earning 77 cents to a man's dollar is one that is both 1) scary and 2) evidence that we should all take action.

There are indeed institutional factors behind this date - our country's organizations and laws have plenty of room for improvement. But so do we. That is why today we've come together with a number of organizations to stand together to start the first annual #Ask4More day.

Ms. JD and Queens Bench Team Up For Equal Pay Day in San Francisco

As you may know, April 17th is equal pay day, the day women's salaries catch up to the salaries of their male colleagues from the previous year.  To examine equal pay day and give you tools to address gender differences in communication and negotiation, Ms. JD and Queens Bench Proudly Present a Reception and Panel as Part of Equal Pay Day. The panel is moderated by Andie Kramer who has been featured on Ms. JD's website for her involvement with the DQs and will examine gender differences in communication styles and how that affects salary negotiations. Please join us at Latham & Watkins in San Francisco for an afternoon of networking and education.

To learn more and to register, click here.

Feminism, now stalled: Law Professor Nancy Gertner says Second Wave needs a second wind

Editor's Note: Feminism, now stalled: Law Professor Nancy Gertner says Second Wave needs a second wind was originally published in the Harvard Gazette. We have reprinted a part of it here at the request of Nancy Gertner.

Nancy Gertner is a former federal judge, the author of a recent memoir (“In Defense of Women”), a professor of practice at Harvard Law School, and an authority on sentencing, jury system discrimination, forensic evidence, and other legal areas.

But go back to June 1971, the month she had a loud argument with her mother in their kitchen in Flushing, Queens, N.Y. Gertner was about to graduate from Yale Law School and assume a prestigious clerkship in Chicago. But her mother wanted her to take the test to be a Triborough Bridge toll taker — just in case.

Women Battle Law Firm Bias

Gender diversity is good for business. As a 2010 McKinsey Global Survey reported, 72 percent of executives "believe there is a direct connection between a company's gender diversity and its financial success." The study also noted that companies with the greatest gender diversity had better than average operating results and returns on equity. Yet, despite these monetary benefits and legal prohibitions on sex discrimination, women have yet to make significant inroads in the power structure and profit sharing at BigLaw.

Admittedly, law has been a male-dominated profession for centuries, but females have provided much of the brainpower since the 1980s. Thirty years of acclimatization has done little to convince the old boys who run these clubs that women deserve full membership in proportion to their representation among the worker bee associate class.

The number of female equity partners at major firms has hovered around 15 percent for the last twenty years. (Equity partners have an ownership interest and receive the largest compensation.) This ceiling is especially troubling given women have constituted at least 40 percent of enrolling law students since 1985 and reached a high of 50 percent in 1999. Additionally, women’s representation in the ranks of associates entering major firms after graduation has been roughly comparable.

The National Association of Women Lawyers 2011 survey of the country’s 200 largest law firms the considered other markers of women’s status. Of the 121 firms responding, 77 percent have at most two women on their governing bodies, which are typically comprised of about ten members.  Worse, female equity partners on average earn only 86% of the amount their male peers earn.

This continuing disparity has been the source of much commentary. Analysts have suggested causes ranging from a lack of mentors to women’s failure to self-promote.

But as this pattern has continued, the hard truth has begun to surface. The primary cause is sexism, generously described as “unconscious bias.”

Pulling Back the Curtain on the 16%

It's easy to get complacent about women's progress in the profession. It's easy because on the one hand things aren't so bad - after all you look around and see amazing women filling the junior ranks of the profession ready for advancement and success. And it's easier than not being complacent, because nothing ever seems to change anyway - we've been at the same 16% of equity partners, professorships, GCs, etc. etc.  for more than a decade.

And then you have lunch with a friend. And you hear about blatant acts of discrimination inflicted with no other purpose but to curtail the horizons of women lawyers simply because they are women. And you watch complacent fade in the rear view mirror as you realize that behind that 16% is an army of deserving but disappointed women.

So what you ask was the story that got my blood boiling? I'll tell you. After the jump ...

UT Dean Sager Resigns Amid Allegations of Gender Discrimination in Faculty Compensation

Last week, Dean Larry Sager was asked to resign as the Dean of the University of Texas Law School. The law school community is in uproar over the allegations of a gender wage gap at the school and the disclosure of a series of forgivable loans from the Law School Foundation to various UT Law faculty, including Sager. Professor Stephanie Lindquist has been named interim dean. 

I don't know any more about the facts of this case than you will after having read the linked articles, so I'm in no position to comments on the merits of the allegations. But here are some things to keep in mind: study after study confirms that the wage gap persists among academics and professionals as it does in every other sector of the economy. So no surprise if that were also the case at Texas. So far what has been disclosed is that 8 of the top 10 earners on the faculty were men. One of the two women in the top ten is Sager's wife. Not a great start. 

A second, related line of research confirms time and again, that the presence of a critical mass of women on compensation or executive committees making salary and bonus decisions is a significant wage gap shrinker. Here again the facts look bad for Texas where there has long been a concern about the underrepresentation of women on budget and compensation committees. 

For all the unanswered questions that remain, this story is worth paying attention to now because it exposes another place where attorney compensation is vulnerable to old-boys club maneuvering and gender bias.

Gender Differences at the Deposition

I participated in my first deposition last week. (At least) two totally harmless differences between the men and the women in the room were apparent.

Unimportant gender difference number one: men have a different bathroom. The practical implication in a deposition where the propounding attorney is a woman and the deponent and opposing counsel are both men? Whenever things are getting interesting the male counsel defending the deposition can ask for a bathroom break, visit the restroom with his client, and spend 15 minutes in there coaching him on how to answer.

Unimportant gender difference number two: men always announce they need to go to the bathroom. On the record. This was pointed out by the court reporter. When women need a break they go off the record and take a break. When men need a break they declare it under oath.

There are gender differences that matter and these aren't them. But they're differences nonetheless.

Dr. Pepper TEN: Light on Calories, Heavy on Sexism

Do you ever have those moments where you are sure that what you have just perceived to have happened surely must not have happened. Because, well, it couldn't possibly have happened because it was just to darn sexist. And it's 2011 for cryin' out loud. And well...surely…

I call these "homey-say-what" moments. When I worked in an environment where men weren't used to thinking twice about the sexist bull honky that came out of their mouths I found that I could usually make my point clear (sir, what you're saying is offensive and unacceptable) without causing a major academic or political debate with a coworker (but boss, I'm telling  you, she was coming straight for my man parts!) by saying, "Homey, say whaaat?" The offending person usually had the sense to not actually repeat what they'd just said, and hopefully think twice about saying it again. It helps that I'm Latina.  If you're Irish you may have to come up with another moderately funny line to say to get your coworker to move on past his sexist jokes.

I had a serious homey-say-what-moment this weekend, and it wasn't an altercation with a coworker. It was an altercation with a national brand that couldn't hear me screaming back at it (or, rather, rewinding the Tivo to decided if I'd heard what I thought I heard. Because, it couldn't have possibly just said that…) from the other side of the tv.