Leaky pipeline for female lawyers

[astra_nomer]

The Boston Globe has an interesting article today about a study done by the MIT Workplace Center (yay, MIT!) the difficulties in retaining female lawyers until they make partner. While this isn't exactly about women in science, the parallels to retaining women in many professions are analogous.

Of the 1,000 Massachusetts lawyers who provided data for the report, 31 percent of female associates had left private practice entirely, compared with 18 percent of male associates. The gap widens among associates with children, to 35 percent and 15 percent, respectively -- reflecting the cultural reality that women remain the primary care givers of children and are therefore more likely to leave their firms for family reasons.

The dropout rate among women lawyers is overwhelmingly the result of the combination of demanding hours, inflexible schedules, lack of viable part-time options, emphasis on billable hours, and failure by law firms to recognize that female lawyers' career trajectories may alternate between work and family, the report found.

...

Nearly 40 percent of women lawyers with children have worked part time, compared with almost no men, even though men in the profession have more children than women, on average.

(Emphasis mine)

It seems like there's no getting around the fact that women are still expected to be the primary caregivers for children, regardless of our own career ambitions and no matter what lip service is paid to gender equality. And then employers choose not to make allowances for that and, in fact, often penalize women for demands for flexibility, hence fewer women at the upper echelons despite growing parity in numbers at entry levels.

This is why I don't believe any of the arguments about intrinsic differences between genders leading to differential career success. Social conditioning and institutional inflexibility have much more to do with it. In scientific terms, I would say that social, cultural, and institutional forces are first order effects, and intrinsic differences are second order. And any good scientist knows that dealing with lower order effects is more important.

Comments

[jadia.livejournal.com]

When I first read your post, it really bugged me, and it took me a bit of digging to figure out why.

The part that I think we can all agree on is that we don't like that there is still this intrinsic assumption in our society that women are going to be the primary caregivers. I think we can agree that such an assumption sucks.

Furthermore, I can accept arguments that workplaces should be more flexible with respect to childcare and whatnot.

The part that bothers me is when this is framed as a women's rights issue. I think the problem isn't "women aren't allowed by workplaces to juggle both a career and a family" - the problem is "women are expected to be the primary caregiver". Work places don't let men juggle a career and family either - if you were a guy and worked part time in order to spend time with your family, I guarentee that you're not going to be tapped for promotion over the guy who is working 90 hours a week and spending no time with his family.

In some sense, I guess, this is the affirmative action argument - because women are disadvantaged by this cultural assumption, workplaces should make special allowances for them. Affirmative action has always bugged me in the same way. Shouldn't we NOT make special allowances for them, and instead try to actually fix the problem where it arises, which is the cultural assumption? (With affirmative action, it's fixing the problem in elementary schools, rather than college admissions.) The other thing that bugs me is that it feels like the fix kind of encodes the cultural assumption in it, and propagates it as a result. It's harder to see that happening in the case of childcare and workplaces than in the case of affirmative action in college admissions. If you encode in your college admissions that blacks are disadvantaged, you propagate the stereotype.

I do see the point of view that since it's too hard or it's hard to see how to fix the cultural assumption problem, we should fix the symptom instead. I'm not sure if it's the right thing to do or if there's a better way.

[(Anonymous)]

"if you were a guy and worked part time in order to spend time with your family, I guarentee that you're not going to be tapped for promotion over the guy who is working 90 hours a week and spending no time with his family."

Actually, this is exactly the direction being alert to the secondary issues of gender equality leads to in my workplace (in a technical field where women are still rare). People have observed that part time workers are more diligent with their time (since we bill hourly, this matters), than people who are just hanging around at work because they don't have lives (or lives they want to devote time to) outside of it.

The way to do it is to explicitly de-gender family-friendly policies. This has worked for my employer. I have several male coworkers who are the primary caregivers, by the definition of 'if the kid gets sick, the one that stays home from work and takes kid to the doctor is the primary caregiver', and it's not uncommon to hear in meetings 'It's 5pm. I must go /right now/ to get the kids from daycare.' from a man anymore.

[jadia.livejournal.com]

This sort of thing is something I have no problems with supporting. :)

[ler.livejournal.com]

The part that bothers me is when this is framed as a women's rights issue.

When I interviewed for a job recently, the interviewing department asked whether I planned to have another kid in the next few years. It was a casual question, and not part of the official interview, but I knew that if I said yes, I would be kissing that job offer good-bye. When a male colleague interviewed for a similar position, the department was delighted that his wife was pregnant again and planning to quit her job to stay home with the kids.

We also talked about salary requirements. I said that I needed a job that would support my family. The (older) faculty man I was talking to said that it had never been the case that academic jobs would support a family. The longer we talked, the more I realized that he meant *women's* academic jobs couldn't support their families, but that it was natural for a man's job to do so. As it turns out, I took an offer which matched my salary requirements. The faculty man hired another man for a sum quite near the one I quoted (and was ridiculed for quoting).

[lokiect.livejournal.com]

I must say, I find it creepy as anything that they'd be delighted that his wife was pregnant and leaving her job. I mean, it's good for them in that it's pressure for him to do well, make more money, and support them, but it still feels creepy/slimy/manipulative/opportunistic.

[ler.livejournal.com]

They were quite jovial about it, really. "Oh, congratulations! Do you know if it's a girl or a boy" etc. I was happy for him to have another kid, and glad that he would be making enough for his wife to stay home, but sad that she "wanted" to.

I put "wanted" in quotes because I'm not sure how much she wants to leave her job, and how much she's afraid of finding a new job, in a new state, that she'll have to leave again in a year or so, while she has two small kids at home that will need daycare.

In academia, there's always the assumption that one member of the couple will take a lesser-track career (or abandon career altogether) so that the other member can get tenure. It's almost always assumed that the woman mommy-tracks while her husband tenure-tracks. When couples conform to those norms, I wonder how much of their choice was due to sexism (whether it be "women should be primary caregivers", "stand by your man", or other, more insidious forms) and how much is really their personal preferences.

[lokiect.livejournal.com]

I'll bet a lot has to do with the opportunities presented to the couple, too. I mean, if you got "you can't support a family on an academic career" and he got "oh, wonderful, you're wife is pregnant and leaving her job!" it's probably clearer early on that the husband has more of a potential career. that and when kids come into the picture there's more pressure to be able to support them right away.

[jadia.livejournal.com]

Oh, right - I'd meant to talk about this too in my comment, but forgot. Yes, I agree with you that the stuff you're talking about is properly framed as a women's rights issue (and horrible). It is slightly different from what I thought the original post was mainly talking about.

[jadia.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I am confused as to why men with kids do better than men without kids. It seems like kids should be more work for everyone, and even if it is not as much work for the dad in general than for the mom, it's still more work, not less. Anyone have a hand-wavy explanation for that?

[lokiect.livejournal.com]

someone posted earlier that part-time people and people with lives outside of work are more effective with their hours than people without. I could see that being a good part of it. combined with the pressure to do well to support the kids.

[narya.livejournal.com]

In this sense it also seems consistent with other findings. For example, some time ago I read a study that found that college students with jobs did better than those without, up to a certain number of hours. The explanation that those researchers gave was much what she said - that the college students with jobs were much more focused about managing their time and actually getting their studying done. Above a certain number of hours (I think it was 15 or 20) their academic performance went back down again because they started not having enough time to actually do the studying.

If "men with kids do better" is a general phenomena, I would expect it's for similar reasons. But I wouldn't expect that level of logic out of the idiots described doing the hiring here.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

I cannot tell you how much more efficient I am with using my time now that I have Verity -- even with the hazy thinking from fatigue. I just don't want to be at work any more than I have to, but I don't have any less work to do; efficiency ensues.

[ler.livejournal.com]

I'm confused about it too, and here's how it's been explained to me in the past:

Men with kids are "settled" and therefore less likely to leave (and uproot their families). They're also more serious (as opposed to drunken party animals), and more likely to work hard because they have families to feed.

Women with kids are more "flighty" and therefore more likely to take time off for their kids and more likely to need maternity leave. They're also at risk of leaving altogether when the pressures of family and professional life get too great.

I'm not sure how true these sentiments are, and I certainly don't agree with them.

[narya.livejournal.com]

Where did this comment come from? I can think of a few explanations, depending on the context...

[ler.livejournal.com]

At the risk of starting "he-said, she-said"...

jadia said that workplace flexibility arguments are irksome when phrased as women's rights arguments. Then s/he talked about affirmative action.

ler responded with some anecdotes suggesting that "women are natural caregivers" is pervasive in hiring practices, strongly implying that workplace flexibility is a women's rights issue because of inequalities in hiring assumptions. She mentioned that having kids is seen as an asset for men, but a detractor for women.

jadia asked why that would be.

[narya.livejournal.com]

She mentioned that having kids is seen as an asset for men, but a detractor for women.

Ah, I missed that this was a general implication and not just a comment about that particular institution. Thanks for the explanation.

Like somebody else said, I've seen elsewhere the perception that men with kids are tied down to the job and less likely to leave but women are more likely to leave. *sigh*

[visage.livejournal.com]

When I interviewed for a job recently, the interviewing department asked whether I planned to have another kid in the next few years. It was a casual question, and not part of the official interview, but I knew that if I said yes, I would be kissing that job offer good-bye.

Intriguing. At my company, it's made very clear to us that asking someone about things like "are you thinking of having [more] kids?" is begging for a lawsuit if we don't make them an offer, and thus we should NEVER EVER go anywhere near such topics.

[ler.livejournal.com]

Dunno what your field is, but in mine, the "interview" is usually a long affair. You're flown out to the department, you spend a day or so meeting everyone, you give a 1-hour presentation, you spend all evening socializing, you go back the next day for follow-up before your flight... there are lots of opportunities to talk about home life. If they want you, they try to sell you on the area and it's normal to be given tours of possible neighborhoods.

[visage.livejournal.com]

I'm an engineer. Interviews here are also pretty much an all-day affair and involve a certain amount of socializing... which is why we're warned away from subjects like that.

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

I'm not advocating affirmative action here. I don't think "special allowances" are the answers - allowances that make life better for everyone would be the way to go. Like having maternity leave and an equivalent paternity leave plan. On-site subsidized daycare for all employees. Flex time. That kind of thing.

I agree, the thing to do would be to fix the cultural problems, but that's a much bigger problem to tackle, and company policies won't do much in the way to solve that. But if you implement family-friendly policies, that will help everyone, including the company/university/lab.

(btw, I feel like I should know you and perhaps even met you in real life, but I can't quite figure out who you are...?)

[jadia.livejournal.com]

I agree with this.

I don't know that we've actually ever been formally introduced, but I hung around at ET a bunch when I was an undergrad. I currently live with lokiect & ilai and am dating visage.