Girl Power

A call for us to authentically use it

As this newsletter has begun to touch upon, there’s a lot that needs to change in the legal profession to make it a place where all women thrive. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by how fundamentally inhospitable it is, and I wonder whether it will really ever become a place where we feel welcome as equals. Over time, I’ve become more and more convinced that our institutions are not going to change until we—as women—start changing them. It’s why, in my first issue, I was so excited to hear about the Lead Counsel Summit. Because it was a forum where powerful women were helping those coming up behind them. And because those women were giving other women real, actionable, straight-no-chaser advice.

What is not helpful to women lawyers (or professional women of any type) is to don ourselves in pink, proclaim that we’re all a #GirlBoss, and then hit the spa. Do I like talking about clothes and hanging with girlfriends? Sure. But doing those things isn’t going to do a damn thing to elevate women in law.

The problem with only celebrating our sisterhood, so to speak, is that it gives us the illusion of power we don’t actually have. When the 2023 Women in the Workplace report (more on this later) finds that women’s representation in the C-suite sits at 28%, that women still aren’t getting promoted to senior leadership, and that women’s workplaces remain filled with microaggressions that lead them to quit, we should not be celebrating anything. While it’s essential to engage in self-care and take breaks from the heaviness of life (and unfortunately, our workplaces), I worry that the admittedly noble desire to honor our shared womanhood actually keeps us quiet. It’s hard to step away from your polished professional image to admit that, among all of your successes, there were some painful places along the way.

But the only way we are going to level the playing field is to be far more strategic about it—by sharing our experiences and then educating other women about them.

Share. We need to share information about what’s actually happening in our workplaces, and to tell the truth about our experiences. While we can of course celebrate the successes of individual women lawyers, we also need to acknowledge that those successes are the exception. Sharing can take many forms. I’m not suggesting that every woman attorney who experiences sexual harassment needs to go public, but when other women come to us with their experiences, we need to acknowledge that they are shared ones.

Educate. There are, of course, many reasons women lawyers don’t share their experiences. They may feel ashamed of them and will likely face adverse employment actions if they do. They may have been subject to bullying or gaslighting. And many women have signed NDAs that prevent them from disclosure. However, even in a world of NDAs, we can use our knowledge and experiences to ensure that what happened to us does not happen to other women.

For example, I’ve recently heard from several women who’ve had disputes with their firms, or male partners, about origination credit. (The existence of such disputes is certainly not surprising: A 2010 report from the American Bar Association concluded that just under three-fourths of white women equity partners and just under 80% of white women income partners, and 84% of minority women, reporting having one.) At your next women’s retreat, rather than talking about how women’s voices should sound like men’s, consider talking about how to ensure that women receive origination credit when it’s due, and how to proceed when your pleas are ignored.

Such sharing and educating doesn’t have to occur at—and certainly shouldn’t be limited to occuring at—a women’s retreat. Some illustrations of sharing and educating I’ve recently seen include:

  • A Facebook group where women lawyers share their compensation and benefits in various fields, experience levels, and geographic regions so that other women can know when they are being underpaid.

  • A conference where one woman bravely stated that she’d recently learned she was earning significantly less than her male counterparts—and then at least five other women stood up to give her advice on how to handle the situation.

  • Gretchen Carlson’s new project where she plans to name companies that require their employees to agree to forced arbitration and/or sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs).

All of these involve honesty about the underlying problem and real-world solutions to those problems. I’d love to hear about more!

It’s been rewarding for me to hear from so many women lawyers across the country who enjoy reading this newsletter. Without exception, you’ve told me that you’ve experienced one or more—or all (!)—of the things I’ve described to date. But why are we ashamed to say that we have experienced them, when we know that by doing so we can make things better for the women who come behind us? After all, while the sharing of stories in the #metoo and #timesup movements was powerful, ultimately it was the reckoning that came to the abusers that was the most powerful—a reckoning that won’t come unless we start by saying that things aren’t so great in the first place.

Wanna Start a Revolution but Aren’t Ready to Share Your Story? Share Comes Now!

If you’re enjoying this newsletter, please share it with others and encourage them to subscribe. And if there’s a particular issue that moves you, drop a comment on the website or on my post about an issue on LinkedIn. One of the most important things to me in writing this newsletter is to bring these discussions out into the open so that we’re not ashamed to talk about them. You can also always send me comments privately at [email protected].

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