You’re likely familiar with marketing practices that give the illusion of supporting a cause or group of people but aren’t more than skin deep. The pink ribbons that come out during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the rainbows plastered on merchandise during the month of June, and products dotted with green labels meant to show us that the company cares about the environment.

It turns out there’s a related practice that affects women specifically. It’s called genderwashing. Genderwashing is not merely the practice of making pink products; instead, it’s when organizations create a positive image by proclaiming their commitment to gender equity, but behind the scenes do things that hinder women’s advancement at work and in society.

These days most organizations—and almost all organizations in our profession—talk about gender equality. They say they value women and diversity and understand how both are good for business. However, these same organizations have policies and practices that actually hinder and hurt the goals they purport to espouse. While organizations know they should care about gender equity, doing something about it can be difficult and time-consuming. And some organizations don’t even care to make meaningful change; they just want to look as if they care.

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about why, despite knowing all the things we need to do to advance women in the workplace, change really isn’t happening, or is happening so slowly that it’s hardly visible. Genderwashing emerged as part of the answer to that question. This week’s issue talks about this phenomenon and how we see it in law firms and other parts of the legal profession.

The Nature of Genderwashing

The term genderwashing was originally coined in 2011 by political psychologist Martha Burk in an article that discussed an announcement by Walmart that it planned to source $20 billion of business from women-owned businesses. Burk found the announcement “curious” in light of the fact that the majority of Walmart’s customers are women and the company had spent over a decade fighting a class action alleging it had systematically discriminated against its female employees.

While the Burk article first used the term, genderwashing did not enter wide usage until academics further developed the concept. Now, the term is defined as “a particular organizational process that perpetuates the myth that an organization is practicing equity and fairness. Yet, in many cases, women and other marginalized individuals continue to see little or no advancement, in terms of gaining access to power and decision-making withing this organization.” Genderwashing occurs through “organizational structure and cultural practices such as policies, procedures, and norms.”

Importantly, while it might be tempting to shame organizations engaged in genderwashing, academics have largely agreed that, although some genderwashing is cynical, the majority of the practice is unconscious. When organizations implement measures designed to improve gender equity, they believe their job is done. As Wendy Fox-Kirk, assistant professor and chair of business administration and marketing at Weber State University explains, “[t]he problem is that we think that inequality has been fixed in organizations, so anyone who raises concerns becomes further demonized . . . [I]f we treat organizational rhetoric as if it’s true, as if we’ve sorted everything, then we will stop looking for problems, and those problems will deepen.”

Its Manifestations

So what are some examples of genderwashing, and how might we see them in the legal profession? (Some of these come from an article written by Rosie Walters in the School of Law and Politics at Cardiff University.)

One example is similar to the Walmart announcement discussed above: when an organization announces an initiative or statistic that seems to suggest the organization is committed to gender equity, without disclosing unflattering facts that negate the initial claim. For example, if a law firm says that it’s a top place for women to work (an award that’s often given with only superficial scrutiny), but then doesn’t disclose that it’s being sued for pay discrimination by its female associates.

Other examples include sponsoring initiatives purporting to support women—like women’s networks or mentoring programs. To be clear, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with women’s networks or mentoring programs, but if these programs are put into place in an environment where women are afraid to take advantage of them, they can be nothing more than window dressing. Even worse, if these types of programs aren’t coupled with genuine efforts to place women in leadership, they can simply make an employer feel good about itself without affecting any meaningful change.

Another example might include an initiative intended to benefit women introduced with great fanfare that behind the scenes has little engagement or follow-through. It’s not hard to find press releases about these types of initiatives at major law firms or employers. The reality of women working at those places can be very different.

In short, all that glitters is not gold. Next time you’re looking at an employer, don’t take its press releases as truth. Look deeper than the sparkles to see if it is truly dedicated to gender equity.

Concluding Thoughts

One thing I’ve found to be important about some of the recent reports published by the ABA is that they not only quantitatively assess whether law firms are achieving gender equality, but also ask for narratives from the women responding to the surveys so that there is a qualitative assessment of those numbers. Those qualitative assessments repeatedly show that, despite the incremental improvements we’re seeing, the way most women lawyers feel about their workplaces or the profession generally has not improved.

One of the reasons we’re not seeing significant change is due to genderwashing. Sometimes when I see a press release about a woman lawyer’s promotion or achievement, I flip over to her employer’s website to see what its gender representation looks like. The reality rarely matches the tone of the announcement. It reminds me of International Women’s Day in 2022, when, in response to companies who made statements supporting gender equality, a Twitter account called Gender Pay Gap Bot responded to those statements with the company’s gender pay gap (companies in the UK with more than 250 employees must report it). Certain companies deleted their initial statements after the account’s response. Faced with similar scrutiny, I suspect the press releases from some legal employers would likewise not survive.

But I have mixed feelings about this too. We’ve learned in recent years that it’s important to talk about what we value, to make clear what we find acceptable, and to positively affirm what we want our society to look like. This means we need to applaud when women find success in male-dominated environments like the law, even if the environments in which those women found that success were not perfect. In applauding those types of things, we emphasize that they matter and that we want to see more of them.

Unfortunately, those moments of applause simply aren’t enough. To achieve gender equity—and to change the narratives women write about what it’s like to work in this profession—we need to be committed to more than just blips of change. We need to work every day at changing behaviors and then measure whether we’re doing it well enough. It’s okay to announce a women’s initiative, as long as you’re asking at the end of the year whether it really made a difference.

So go ahead and cheer on the women lawyers in your workplace. They need it. But do more. Much more.

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