Where are the women Supreme Court law clerks?

Is the Supreme Court of the United States guilty of sex discrimination? Law blogs are buzzing about the fact that of the 37 Supreme Court law clerks this year, only 7 are women.

A Supreme Court clerkship following law school is the plum of all clerkships, and is often a free pass to any law job following the temporary clerkship. Supreme Court justices pick their own clerks, usually on the basis of academic achievement in law school. I went to Stanford Law years ago, and you couldn't have convinced me then or now that many of the women there were less worthy of a Supreme Court clerkship than their male classmates.

Shame, shame on the Supremes!

Submitted by Jan Kabili (view blog

) on Fri, 09/01/2006 - 2:24pm

Posted In

Gender |
Law

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It's not just about blogging

Whenever I talk to people about why Lisa and Jory and I teamed up to do the first BlogHer I always point out that it wasn't just because some people were asking, quite seriously "where are the women bloggers?"

At the same point in time, these questions were also being asked:

Where are the women on newspaper op-ed pages?
Where are the women on Sunday morning talk shows?
Where are the women in Fortune 500 CEO offices and Board Rooms?
Where are the women on speaker rosters?
Where are the women in our federal government?

Well, can you ask the same questions today? You can. Just look at a current little blogtroversy going on over the speaking roster for a conference this October in SF.

And I guess we now can add: Where are the women in Supreme Court clerkships?

So, how do we not get discouraged? Who's got some progress we can point to? And how to replicate that?

One example: I think the showing of women at SXSW this year was progress. And I have to tell you that while SXSW reached out to BlogHer to be a sponsor, give away a pass and ask us to announce a call for speakers, we also responded by asking for the chance to produce a track of sessions. This started a relationship that not only resulted in our 5 sessions and 20 women speakers, but gave Hugh, SXSW's organizer, a resource to ask for more referrals for other panels.

Any other examples of progress and how it was encouraged?

Elisa Camahort
BlogHer and Worker Bees
elisa@blogher.org/elisa@workerbees.biz

Submitted by Elisa Camahort on Fri, 09/01/2006 - 14:47

Elisa:

I couldn't agree more that the where-are-the-women question is not just about blogging. It is outrageous and sad that this is still an issue in many professions that afford members positions of power -- years after we addressed it in the initial women's movement of '70's. It is particularly rampant in the field of law, especially in law firms. And it's a big problem in technology fields, as we discussed in the Get Deeply Geeky Session at BlogHer 06.

Let me add my kudos to Hugh Forrest, SXSW organizer, for again reaching out to women speakers as he recruits for the next SXSW 2007.

Jan Kabili
Blogher Contributing Editor Technology-Web-Social Media
Also blogging at http://photoshoponline.tv and http://tuaw.com .

Submitted by Jan Kabili on Sat, 09/02/2006 - 09:03

"Where are the Women Redux"

I wrote a similar round-up -- incorporating the Supreme Court clerk story, Elise Bauer's response to the Washington Post, and Shelley Powers' response to the Office 2.0 conference, at Sour Duck.

The title, btw, is from Anne Zelenka's post, "Where are the Women Redux" (at her blog, Anne 2.0.)

Feel free to add the Feminism & Gender category to this post -- highly appropriate.

Melinda
Sour Duck

Submitted by Melinda Casino on Fri, 09/01/2006 - 22:14