Being that I 1) have now been in the legal world approximately twenty weeks and 2) am female, I’m clearly qualified to comment.
When I first started law school I was surprised at the number of women. Coming from engineering, law school was bursting with estrogen. In my prior work and school, I was frequently the only woman in the room.
It never bothered me much. I liked working in a mostly-male environment. The worst part was meeting the new life forms that grew in the kitchen because young male engineers have an aversion to dumping old food in the trash.
EthicalEsq opines that while the legal profession has many problems, gender bias is not one of them. Perhaps. I haven’t been in the game long enough to know. But I am a little skeptical that any profession can be truly free of bias.
Most men and women are decent, but in any group there is a small percentage of jerks. They’re usually the people that nobody else likes anyhow, but if you’re a woman or a minority or stand out in any other way, the jerks have an extra weapon against you.
When I was an undergraduate in computer science, I had a TA who was adamant that women didn’t belong in engineering. When I asked him questions, he’d answer in monosyllables. He graded me more harshly. He was nasty to me in front of the class.
My male classmates were appalled, and, though they shouldn’t have been, embarrassed. Without ever speaking to me about it directly, they rallied around me. If I had a question, I asked one of them, and they asked the TA, pretending it was their question. They made sure that I got the homework. One of them quietly recommended to the professor that the professor grade my homework. Thanks to them, I passed the class with a very good grade, despite the TA. I’m still good friends with my former classmates.
Perhaps an overt act of bias like this wouldn’t happen in law now, given the percentage of women in the field. However, so long as there are blonde jokes and female driver jokes, the jerks out there will have a another tool at their disposal. I’m skeptical that they wouldn’t use it.
5 comments:
I understand Scheherazade's 'What does it matter?', but I think the trustee is right to see a problem.
The suggestion by EthicalesQ to a friend's daughter to be careful to see that some people who 'see everything through the prism of a mistreated minority see many problems and slights that just don't exist, or simply make themselves far more miserable than they need to be' is right, but also sounds like the words of someone who would fail to see many problems and slights that do exist!
I completely agree with you. I know that it's easy to see the world as full of slights that don't really exist -- a long time ago I knew a woman in engineering who saw every slightly off-color joke as demeaning, which is absurd. But, as you say, there *are* slights that exist! It's better to be aware of them and deal with it than pretend they aren't there.
Incidentally, I'm Margaret Marks of Transblawg. For some reason, AOL wants my Compuserve webview password and then gives me this ridiculous name I don't use online. I will have to register under a different name if I comment again!
Nice to meet you -- your blog is one of my favorites!
I think your problem with the login is a cookie problem. If you clear your cookies, you should be able to use the screenname you like.
Thanks - and thanks!
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