Earlier this week The Wall Street Journal’s LawBlog posted some thoughts on why women don’t stay at law firms. The article identified work/life and mentorship as two areas that law firms could improve to retain female talent, and floated that idea that sexism might also play a role in the low ratio of male to female big law partners. As is so often the case, the comments said as much or more about women and law than the article.
To paraphrase, quite a few went something like this: Stop whining! There’s no sexism here, women just don’t want to put in the hours. And women should be home with the kids anyway. Right, no sexism here.
If the feedback on the article is representative of the law community, sexism is indeed an enormous problem in law. From the men who talked about “feminist cry-babies,” to the ones who overtly said females shouldn’t be in the workplace, to the unfounded suggestion that having women around makes men targets for sexual harassment suits, sexism could not have been more pervasive. It struck me that part of the reason women might not be sticking around in law is that they have to work with these guys every day.
It was also interesting how the article’s mention of work/life was instantly interpreted as working fewer hours and asking for special favors. This is a problem larger than just law. Throughout corporate environments, if you say “work/life” there is an immediate connotation of working less. But as I’ve argued before, for many people work/life doesn’t mean working fewer hours — it means apportioning your time in ways that allow you to pick up your kids from school or take them to the doctor. This can be done without limiting the hours that you work.
The women who commented on the article told a different story. Many of them were working full-time, had not asked for any “work/life” accomodations, and didn’t even have children; however, they still felt marginalized. They got less interesting and robust assignments, in part because there was an assumption that they would leave the firm at some point, and in part because of an old boys network that played out on golf courses and at strip clubs.
This issue is also not limited to law. Women in many industries, particularly if they have children, suffer from a kind of benevolent sexism that assumes they want “work/life” (read: fewer hours, easier job) rather than challenging work that requires longer hours. This leads to a downward spiral in which women have less interesting and meaningful jobs, are compensated less well, and therefore have more incentive to opt-out. I suspect many women — even mothers — would take great assignments if offered, even if it sometimes means spending less time with family.
My job, for example, demands travel and evening work at the executive levels. When a recruiter once said to me that she assumed I would not be interested in work that required these commitments, she was essentially pigeon-holing me into junior positions. It was offensive and untrue. But I think this happens all the time in the corporate world, and it leads to women being pegged as wanting easy work.
Finally, several of the comments mentioned that men feel more driven to work toward partnership at law firms because they are socially expected to provide for their families. This argument doesn’t hold water — 63% of women are now the primary or co-breadwinner in their family. Women are as driven as men to succeed financially for their family, and maybe more so. There is ample evidence that women devote a higher percentage of their income to taking care of their children than men do.
Overall the comments on this piece don’t offer much hope to women on the law partner track. A few suggest that things may change when the current generation of older white men who run Big Law retire. I’m not so sure; the younger generation of partners and partner track lawyers is not significantly more diverse than their predecessors. Even more importantly, it appears that regardless of generation or gender, law partners believe that there’s no alternative to their concept of work. That can only change if there is a seismic shift in how law operates.
Any lawyers out there want to weigh in?
Related links:
- The Journal article references “Unequal Partners in Law: Bias or Personal Choice?” by Lisa Wong Lackland in the Las Vegas Sun. I don’t agree with much of what she says, but it’s an interesting take.
- A few years ago The New York Times asked “Why Do So Few Women Reach the Top of Big Law Firms.”
- Yolanda Young at OnBeingABlackLawyer.com writes about a recent study from Catalyst indicating that 75% of women of color leave their law firms after five years, suggesting that there are larger problems around diversity and gender in the industry.
- KJ Dell’Antonia at DoubleX explores why there aren’t more female “rainmakers” in law.
