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In October Girlphyte.com looks at LAW: WHY SO MANY WOMEN CHOOSE IT THEN LOSE IT. Watch the video and take the test to see if you're really a lawyer, you're a lawyer with your life in balance or breathing with a pulse but other life signs uncertain.
If you've read the issue, you're looking to see if we’re blowing smoke or the profession actually is in self-destruct mode. You want the "authorities". We won't disappoint you. You’ve clearly self identified as a lawyer or a lawyer wannabe. Who reads a webzine and looks for authority? To deepen your lawyer squint, we’re reporting footnote style:
“As big law firms struggle to retain women lawyers and boost them into leadership roles, they’re losing many to contract positions, smaller firms, in-house jobs, government posts and legal aid careers that women lawyers say give them more control over their work and personal lives. The National Law Journal’s report of June 13, 2007 was highlighted in The Wall Street Journal:
"Female lawyers continue to face intractable challenges in their attempts to become partners, causing them to abandon law firms --- and the legal profession entirely-- at a dramatically higher rate than men… "The conclusions of all of these studies are very much the same," said Mona Harrington, program director of the MIT Workplace Center, "and that in itself is a story: Nothing is changing." The Study found:
Women make up only 17 percent of law firm partners.
Women leave the partnership track in far greater numbers than men.
Women stop pursuing partnership mainly because of the difficulty of combining work and child care.
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.
Many firms have flextime policies but are "clever in discouraging their uses."
slightly more than half of women move to legal positions at nonprofit groups, government agencies, or corporations. 46% leave the law altogether. Less than a 1/3 of men leave the partnership track. The Boston Globe, May 2, 2007
Canada’s Supreme Court Chief Justice, Madam Beverley McLachlan spoke out this year about a “systemic exodus” of talented women who could not meet the demands of male dominated firms.
Saturday, September 15, 2007, Canada's Financial Post reports that "pink ghettos remained as entrenched as ever; many Canadian women still work in traditional professions.” The Post reports that "female associates are less likely to be introduced clients, and if they were brought to client meetings, they would be the ones asked to make photocopies."
Convinced? Want to make that all change.? Go to Girlphyte.com; send your comments to svanderhout@girlphyte.com; spread the word.
