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WomenInThisBusiness 10 - 15 Jul 2010 - Main.CeciliaWang
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| | When we were discussing Cerriere's Answer today, I thought Jessica brought up an interesting point about how women sometimes worry that they come across as "too edgy" when they speak. (Jessica, please correct me if I didn't accurately understand what you were saying). A female friend of mine here has mentioned this very issue to me on a couple occasions. She claims that female students, more often than male students, have a tendency to ask questions instead of make statements, of if they make a statement to soften it with a qualification such as "I feel like...."
Coincidentally, an article posted today on CLS' homepage mentions this as well. Professor Carol Sanger was honored at The Columbia Law Women’s Association annual Myra Bradwell Dinner, and this is a small excerpt from her speech: | | | To me, the problem is why the 'right' amount of aggressiveness is the standard. In contracts last semester, we talked about the idea that the law does not need to be such an adversarial system, but could be more cooperative, a model promulgated by feminist legal scholars. The question then becomes why there is an assumption that the man's way of doing it is what the woman needs to emulate (as others have discussed, a difficult thing to do), and how to overcome that presumption. How to do it I have no idea- it seems like the law fits into Veblen's primitive society, where some work becomes men's work and others women's work (with law, like any other fighting, traditionally being men's). How do we turn what was considered 'men's' work into gender-neutral work, where the tendencies of one gender are as acceptable as the other? And even if we could level the playing field as lawyers so that 'going for the jugular' was not necessarily the expectation, how would litigators overcome the jury's tendency to find the aggressive male norms more persuasive than the cooperative female norms because of wider societal expectations? (FYI- I know plenty of women will say they do not meet these norms, but I'm just using the limited knowledge I have of feminist legal scholarship so please correct me if I'm wrong)
-- RorySkaggs - 22 Apr 2010 | |
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It’s not just older law firm partners who make such comments as that a girl will be fine as long as she’s pretty. A male law student have said the same and it was incredibly irritating and demeaning (you know who you are). And older female law students seeking to reassure. It does seem true though, that women, more so than men, have the option of counting on a spouse. My bureau at the DA’s office has a five to one female to male ratio and even my supervisors at a human rights organization have commented on that the non-profit world is largely staffed by women. I kind of assumed this was due to women feeling less need for stability and savings, but maybe women are just more altruistic, or have been pushed out of the private sector?
Work becomes gender neutral when the quality of individual's performances can be evaluated in a completely objective way. The influence of gender assumptions and expectations in the evaluation of one's work as a lawyer, especially in public legal performance, is particularly difficult to overcome because the legal system is so heavily reliant on the judgments and perceptions of people. A phenomenon seen within immigrant groups striving to be successful and recognized is an overwhelming preference for quantitatively evaluated subjects. Medicine, engineering, etc, when the results are much less reliant others’ perceptions. A repaired heart is a repaired heart whether the surgeon had a Middle Eastern accent or not.
There is little a female lawyer can do to persuade a client to hire her when he believes implicitly and unalterably that men make better lawyers. She will have to prove herself beyond the standards applied to successful men. And learn to not care the names and judgments muttered about her, except, of course, that of judges and juries.
-- CeciliaWang - 15 Jul 2010 | | | |
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