{"id":103222,"date":"2012-02-28T14:50:47","date_gmt":"2012-02-28T19:50:47","guid":{"rendered":"\/gazette\/?p=103222"},"modified":"2019-05-15T17:21:19","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T21:21:19","slug":"feminism-now-stalled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2012\/02\/feminism-now-stalled\/","title":{"rendered":"Feminism, now stalled"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t
\"\"

It\u2019s not a situation that discrimination lawsuits can correct, said Nancy Gertner, because so many women are \u201cleaning out\u201d of their professions \u2014 that is, anticipating future pressures and so choosing career paths that enable them to leave the workplace more readily. Gertner, a professor of practice at Harvard Law School, was giving a talk at the Harvard Kennedy School.<\/p>

Jon Chase\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\t

\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tNation & World\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\n\t\t

\n\t\tFeminism, now stalled\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t
\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\tCorydon Ireland\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\tHarvard Staff Writer\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/address>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t

\n\t\t\tLaw Professor Nancy Gertner says Second Wave needs a second wind\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\n<\/header>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\t\t

Nancy Gertner<\/a> is a former federal judge, the author of a recent memoir (\u201cIn Defense of Women\u201d), a professor of practice at Harvard Law School<\/a>, and an authority on sentencing, jury system discrimination, forensic evidence, and other legal areas.<\/p>\n

But go back to June 1971, the month she had a loud argument with her mother in their kitchen in Flushing, Queens, N.Y. Gertner was about to graduate from Yale Law School and assume a prestigious clerkship in Chicago. But her mother wanted her to take the test to be a Triborough Bridge toll taker \u2014 just in case.<\/p>\n

For a young woman lawyer at the time, \u201cjust in case\u201d wasn\u2019t a bad idea. The law was a man\u2019s world. But just a decade later, the culture seemed to swing toward what feminists worked for: parity. By the late 1980s, first-rate law firms were hiring men and women in equal numbers. \u201cWe thought the numbers would do everything,\u201d Gertner said during a lunchtime talk on Feb. 23 that was sponsored by the Women and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. (Weekly talks<\/a> there are part of the program\u2019s mission to create gender equality.)<\/p>\n

But faith in the raw numbers turned out to be \u201cdramatically wrong,\u201d said Gertner. \u201cAdvancement has stalled.\u201d Half of all new lawyers are women, she said, but only 16 percent of equity partners in law firms are female. And of lawyers who leave the profession, most are women \u2014 and most do it because of family and social concerns.<\/p>\n

Gertner used the lens of the legal profession to speculate why, after earlier rapid advances, feminism\u2019s cultural agenda seems to have stalled. (Universities, she said, are in an analogous position, with plenty of women graduating as Ph.D.s, but few getting to the top of the academic game.)<\/p>\n

During her years on the bench from 1994 to 2011, Gertner got used to being trotted out at events as an example of progress. \u201cYou\u2019re supposed to say: \u2018Things are fabulous,\u2019 \u201d she told her audience at the Taubman Building\u2019s Cason Seminar Room. But they are not. The women\u2019s movement was not just about having more choices, she said, but about \u201crevolutionary\u201d changes in the workplace and at home that have not happened yet.<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s \u201cimperfectly transformed world,\u201d said Gertner, it is social expectations and an \u201cunfriendly workforce\u201d that mean a woman \u2014 if anyone \u2014 usually will stay home with the children. (She called this reality \u201cthe maternal wall.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Gertner cited one study that showed 30 percent of women leaving the law, including 15 percent of equity partners, those with a financial stake in a firm. Another study, she said, showed that 34 percent of female law graduates have worked part time, compared with only 9 percent of their male counterparts.<\/p>\n

So without a corresponding transformation of family responsibilities, feminism is likely to stay stalled, she said. \u201cWe\u2019ve hit a wall.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a situation that discrimination lawsuits can correct, said Gertner, because so many women are \u201cleaning out\u201d of their professions \u2014 that is, anticipating future pressures and so choosing career paths that enable them to leave the workplace more readily. (She gave as an example the woman who chooses a small family-practice firm over a larger one that presents more challenges and opportunities.) \u201cIf women are leaning out\u201d of their own volition, said Gertner, \u201cthen their failure to advance can\u2019t be the subject of a lawsuit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Besides, she added, overt gender discrimination in the workplace has gone the way of discos and bell-bottoms, \u201ca world that no longer exists.\u201d What is left, said Gertner, is \u201cimplicit bias,\u201d which has the same stalling effect on feminism as the maternal wall.<\/p>\n

There is also an issue with executing the law itself \u2014 a denial of the power of context. The gender discrimination lawsuits that do make it to court are weakened by a tendency to \u201cslice and dice\u201d the circumstances of alleged discrimination, said Gertner. \u201cYou don\u2019t look at them as a course of conduct,\u201d but as separate events. \u201cDiscrimination in the real world does not fit into the legal models we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

One way to counteract this tendency in the law is to have judges on the bench who are aware of the way the world works. \u201cI had an appreciation of context,\u201d said Gertner of her time as a judge. \u201cI never saw the law as legal rules on the page.\u201d (That appreciation, in part, was biographical. Her judicial tenure was influenced by her early childhood in a tenement on Manhattan\u2019s lower East Side, by championing unpopular clients as a young lawyer, and by becoming a mother at age 39.)<\/p>\n

In the absence of overt gender discrimination, it is hard to get legal redress, said Gertner. For young women in the workplace today, \u201cit\u2019s the opacity of discrimination\u201d that makes advancement difficult, she said, instead of the stark realities of discrimination in the 1970s. Gertner said, \u201cIt was easier for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

With feminism stalled by social pressures at home and the workplace, she offered a radical idea. \u201cThe government needs to step up to the plate,\u201d Gertner said, beginning by providing incentives for day care that would make it easier for women to combine career and work.<\/p>\n

After all, there is a \u201cbusiness case\u201d to be made for gender equality in law firms and workplaces, \u201cbeyond the obvious need to tap a rich vein of talent,\u201d said Gertner. In a diverse world, workplace diversity adds to \u201cthe texture and the richness of the dialogue,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In the end, feminism\u2019s mission of workplace parity has been stalled by the three factors of the maternal wall, implicit bias, and the opacity of discrimination, Gertner said.<\/p>\n

She said advocates have a list of things to do: parse workplace discrimination by collecting the right data; engage in collective action; and challenge the government to underwrite day care and other engines of cultural change.<\/p>\n

But all this is not enough. \u201cThe most important thing is: We have to be unsatisfied,\u201d Gertner told her largely female, professional audience. \u201cWe have to not believe that this was the accomplishment of the women\u2019s movement \u2014 that I\u2019m here and that you\u2019re here is somehow all we can achieve.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Gertner, a professor of practice at Harvard Law School, was giving a talk at the Harvard Kennedy School.","mediaId":103447,"mediaSize":"full","mediaType":"image","mediaUrl":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/022312_gertner_015_605main.jpg","poster":"","title":"Feminism, now stalled","subheading":"Law Professor Nancy Gertner says Second Wave needs a second wind","centeredImage":true,"className":"is-style-full-width-text-below","mediaHeight":403,"mediaWidth":605,"backgroundFixed":false,"backgroundTone":"light","coloredBackground":false,"displayOverlay":true,"fadeInText":false,"isAmbient":false,"mediaLength":"","mediaPosition":"","posterText":"","titleAbove":false,"useUncroppedImage":false,"lock":[],"metadata":[]},"innerBlocks":[],"innerHTML":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"403\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/022312_gertner_015_605main.jpg\" width=\"605\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><p class=\"wp-element-caption--caption\">It\u2019s not a situation that discrimination lawsuits can correct, said Nancy Gertner, because so many women are \u201cleaning out\u201d of their professions \u2014 that is, anticipating future pressures and so choosing career paths that enable them to leave the workplace more readily. Gertner, a professor of practice at Harvard Law School, was giving a talk at the Harvard Kennedy School.<\/p><p class=\"wp-element-caption--credit\">Jon Chase\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","innerContent":["<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"403\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/022312_gertner_015_605main.jpg\" width=\"605\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><p class=\"wp-element-caption--caption\">It\u2019s not a situation that discrimination lawsuits can correct, said Nancy Gertner, because so many women are \u201cleaning out\u201d of their professions \u2014 that is, anticipating future pressures and so choosing career paths that enable them to leave the workplace more readily. Gertner, a professor of practice at Harvard Law School, was giving a talk at the Harvard Kennedy School.<\/p><p class=\"wp-element-caption--credit\">Jon Chase\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n"],"rendered":"<header\n\tclass=\"wp-block-harvard-gazette-article-header alignfull article-header is-style-full-width-text-below centered-image\"\n\tstyle=\" \"\n>\n\t<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"403\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/022312_gertner_015_605main.jpg\" width=\"605\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><p class=\"wp-element-caption--caption\">It\u2019s not a situation that discrimination lawsuits can correct, said Nancy Gertner, because so many women are \u201cleaning out\u201d of their professions \u2014 that is, anticipating future pressures and so choosing career paths that enable them to leave the workplace more readily. Gertner, a professor of practice at Harvard Law School, was giving a talk at the Harvard Kennedy School.<\/p><p class=\"wp-element-caption--credit\">Jon Chase\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\t<div class=\"article-header__content\">\n\t\t\t<a\n\t\t\tclass=\"article-header__category\"\n\t\t\thref=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/nation-world\/\"\n\t\t>\n\t\t\tNation & World\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\n\t\t<h1 class=\"article-header__title wp-block-heading \">\n\t\tFeminism, now stalled\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t<div class=\"article-header__meta\">\n\t\t<div class=\"wp-block-post-author\">\n\t\t\t<address class=\"wp-block-post-author__content\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"author wp-block-post-author__name\">\n\t\tCorydon Ireland\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t<p class=\"wp-block-post-author__byline\">\n\t\t\tHarvard Staff Writer\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/address>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t<time class=\"article-header__date\" datetime=\"2012-02-28\">\n\t\t\tFebruary 28, 2012\t\t<\/time>\n\n\t\t<span class=\"article-header__reading-time\">\n\t\t\t6 min read\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<h2 class=\"article-header__subheading wp-block-heading\">\n\t\t\tLaw Professor Nancy Gertner says Second Wave needs a second wind\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\n<\/header>\n"},"2":{"blockName":"core\/group","attrs":{"templateLock":false,"metadata":{"name":"Article content"},"align":"wide","layout":{"type":"constrained","justifyContent":"center"},"tagName":"div","lock":[],"className":"","style":[],"backgroundColor":"","textColor":"","gradient":"","fontSize":"","fontFamily":"","borderColor":"","ariaLabel":"","anchor":""},"innerBlocks":[{"blockName":"core\/freeform","attrs":{"content":"","lock":[],"metadata":[]},"innerBlocks":[],"innerHTML":"\n\t\t<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.law.harvard.edu\/faculty\/directory\/index.html?id=953\">Nancy Gertner<\/a> is a former federal judge, the author of a recent memoir (\u201cIn Defense of Women\u201d), a professor of practice at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.law.harvard.edu\/index.html\">Harvard Law School<\/a>, and an authority on sentencing, jury system discrimination, forensic evidence, and other legal areas.<\/p>\n<p>But go back to June 1971, the month she had a loud argument with her mother in their kitchen in Flushing, Queens, N.Y. Gertner was about to graduate from Yale Law School and assume a prestigious clerkship in Chicago. But her mother wanted her to take the test to be a Triborough Bridge toll taker \u2014 just in case.<\/p>\n<p>For a young woman lawyer at the time, \u201cjust in case\u201d wasn\u2019t a bad idea. The law was a man\u2019s world. But just a decade later, the culture seemed to swing toward what feminists worked for: parity. By the late 1980s, first-rate law firms were hiring men and women in equal numbers. \u201cWe thought the numbers would do everything,\u201d Gertner said during a lunchtime talk on Feb. 23 that was sponsored by the Women and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. (Weekly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hks.harvard.edu\/centers\/wappp\/news-events\/events-calendar\">talks<\/a> there are part of the program\u2019s mission to create gender equality.)<\/p>\n<p>But faith in the raw numbers turned out to be \u201cdramatically wrong,\u201d said Gertner. \u201cAdvancement has stalled.\u201d Half of all new lawyers are women, she said, but only 16 percent of equity partners in law firms are female. And of lawyers who leave the profession, most are women \u2014 and most do it because of family and social concerns.<\/p>\n<p>Gertner used the lens of the legal profession to speculate why, after earlier rapid advances, feminism\u2019s cultural agenda seems to have stalled. (Universities, she said, are in an analogous position, with plenty of women graduating as Ph.D.s, but few getting to the top of the academic game.)<\/p>\n<p>During her years on the bench from 1994 to 2011, Gertner got used to being trotted out at events as an example of progress. \u201cYou\u2019re supposed to say: \u2018Things are fabulous,\u2019 \u201d she told her audience at the Taubman Building\u2019s Cason Seminar Room. But they are not. The women\u2019s movement was not just about having more choices, she said, but about \u201crevolutionary\u201d changes in the workplace and at home that have not happened yet.<\/p>\n<p>In today\u2019s \u201cimperfectly transformed world,\u201d said Gertner, it is social expectations and an \u201cunfriendly workforce\u201d that mean a woman \u2014 if anyone \u2014 usually will stay home with the children. (She called this reality \u201cthe maternal wall.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>Gertner cited one study that showed 30 percent of women leaving the law, including 15 percent of equity partners, those with a financial stake in a firm. Another study, she said, showed that 34 percent of female law graduates have worked part time, compared with only 9 percent of their male counterparts.<\/p>\n<p>So without a corresponding transformation of family responsibilities, feminism is likely to stay stalled, she said. \u201cWe\u2019ve hit a wall.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not a situation that discrimination lawsuits can correct, said Gertner, because so many women are \u201cleaning out\u201d of their professions \u2014 that is, anticipating future pressures and so choosing career paths that enable them to leave the workplace more readily. (She gave as an example the woman who chooses a small family-practice firm over a larger one that presents more challenges and opportunities.) \u201cIf women are leaning out\u201d of their own volition, said Gertner, \u201cthen their failure to advance can\u2019t be the subject of a lawsuit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Besides, she added, overt gender discrimination in the workplace has gone the way of discos and bell-bottoms, \u201ca world that no longer exists.\u201d What is left, said Gertner, is \u201cimplicit bias,\u201d which has the same stalling effect on feminism as the maternal wall.<\/p>\n<p>There is also an issue with executing the law itself \u2014 a denial of the power of context. The gender discrimination lawsuits that do make it to court are weakened by a tendency to \u201cslice and dice\u201d the circumstances of alleged discrimination, said Gertner. \u201cYou don\u2019t look at them as a course of conduct,\u201d but as separate events. \u201cDiscrimination in the real world does not fit into the legal models we have.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One way to counteract this tendency in the law is to have judges on the bench who are aware of the way the world works. \u201cI had an appreciation of context,\u201d said Gertner of her time as a judge. \u201cI never saw the law as legal rules on the page.\u201d (That appreciation, in part, was biographical. Her judicial tenure was influenced by her early childhood in a tenement on Manhattan\u2019s lower East Side, by championing unpopular clients as a young lawyer, and by becoming a mother at age 39.)<\/p>\n<p>In the absence of overt gender discrimination, it is hard to get legal redress, said Gertner. For young women in the workplace today, \u201cit\u2019s the opacity of discrimination\u201d that makes advancement difficult, she said, instead of the stark realities of discrimination in the 1970s. Gertner said, \u201cIt was easier for me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With feminism stalled by social pressures at home and the workplace, she offered a radical idea. \u201cThe government needs to step up to the plate,\u201d Gertner said, beginning by providing incentives for day care that would make it easier for women to combine career and work.<\/p>\n<p>After all, there is a \u201cbusiness case\u201d to be made for gender equality in law firms and workplaces, \u201cbeyond the obvious need to tap a rich vein of talent,\u201d said Gertner. In a diverse world, workplace diversity adds to \u201cthe texture and the richness of the dialogue,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, feminism\u2019s mission of workplace parity has been stalled by the three factors of the maternal wall, implicit bias, and the opacity of discrimination, Gertner said.<\/p>\n<p>She said advocates have a list of things to do: parse workplace discrimination by collecting the right data; engage in collective action; and challenge the government to underwrite day care and other engines of cultural change.<\/p>\n<p>But all this is not enough. \u201cThe most important thing is: We have to be unsatisfied,\u201d Gertner told her largely female, professional audience. \u201cWe have to not believe that this was the accomplishment of the women\u2019s movement \u2014 that I\u2019m here and that you\u2019re here is somehow all we can achieve.\u201d<\/p>\n","innerContent":["\n\t\t<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.law.harvard.edu\/faculty\/directory\/index.html?id=953\">Nancy Gertner<\/a> is a former federal judge, the author of a recent memoir (\u201cIn Defense of Women\u201d), a professor of practice at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.law.harvard.edu\/index.html\">Harvard Law School<\/a>, and an authority on sentencing, jury system discrimination, forensic evidence, and other legal areas.<\/p>\n<p>But go back to June 1971, the month she had a loud argument with her mother in their kitchen in Flushing, Queens, N.Y. Gertner was about to graduate from Yale Law School and assume a prestigious clerkship in Chicago. But her mother wanted her to take the test to be a Triborough Bridge toll taker \u2014 just in case.<\/p>\n<p>For a young woman lawyer at the time, \u201cjust in case\u201d wasn\u2019t a bad idea. The law was a man\u2019s world. But just a decade later, the culture seemed to swing toward what feminists worked for: parity. By the late 1980s, first-rate law firms were hiring men and women in equal numbers. \u201cWe thought the numbers would do everything,\u201d Gertner said during a lunchtime talk on Feb. 23 that was sponsored by the Women and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. (Weekly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hks.harvard.edu\/centers\/wappp\/news-events\/events-calendar\">talks<\/a> there are part of the program\u2019s mission to create gender equality.)<\/p>\n<p>But faith in the raw numbers turned out to be \u201cdramatically wrong,\u201d said Gertner. \u201cAdvancement has stalled.\u201d Half of all new lawyers are women, she said, but only 16 percent of equity partners in law firms are female. And of lawyers who leave the profession, most are women \u2014 and most do it because of family and social concerns.<\/p>\n<p>Gertner used the lens of the legal profession to speculate why, after earlier rapid advances, feminism\u2019s cultural agenda seems to have stalled. (Universities, she said, are in an analogous position, with plenty of women graduating as Ph.D.s, but few getting to the top of the academic game.)<\/p>\n<p>During her years on the bench from 1994 to 2011, Gertner got used to being trotted out at events as an example of progress. \u201cYou\u2019re supposed to say: \u2018Things are fabulous,\u2019 \u201d she told her audience at the Taubman Building\u2019s Cason Seminar Room. But they are not. The women\u2019s movement was not just about having more choices, she said, but about \u201crevolutionary\u201d changes in the workplace and at home that have not happened yet.<\/p>\n<p>In today\u2019s \u201cimperfectly transformed world,\u201d said Gertner, it is social expectations and an \u201cunfriendly workforce\u201d that mean a woman \u2014 if anyone \u2014 usually will stay home with the children. (She called this reality \u201cthe maternal wall.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>Gertner cited one study that showed 30 percent of women leaving the law, including 15 percent of equity partners, those with a financial stake in a firm. Another study, she said, showed that 34 percent of female law graduates have worked part time, compared with only 9 percent of their male counterparts.<\/p>\n<p>So without a corresponding transformation of family responsibilities, feminism is likely to stay stalled, she said. \u201cWe\u2019ve hit a wall.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not a situation that discrimination lawsuits can correct, said Gertner, because so many women are \u201cleaning out\u201d of their professions \u2014 that is, anticipating future pressures and so choosing career paths that enable them to leave the workplace more readily. (She gave as an example the woman who chooses a small family-practice firm over a larger one that presents more challenges and opportunities.) \u201cIf women are leaning out\u201d of their own volition, said Gertner, \u201cthen their failure to advance can\u2019t be the subject of a lawsuit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Besides, she added, overt gender discrimination in the workplace has gone the way of discos and bell-bottoms, \u201ca world that no longer exists.\u201d What is left, said Gertner, is \u201cimplicit bias,\u201d which has the same stalling effect on feminism as the maternal wall.<\/p>\n<p>There is also an issue with executing the law itself \u2014 a denial of the power of context. The gender discrimination lawsuits that do make it to court are weakened by a tendency to \u201cslice and dice\u201d the circumstances of alleged discrimination, said Gertner. \u201cYou don\u2019t look at them as a course of conduct,\u201d but as separate events. \u201cDiscrimination in the real world does not fit into the legal models we have.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One way to counteract this tendency in the law is to have judges on the bench who are aware of the way the world works. \u201cI had an appreciation of context,\u201d said Gertner of her time as a judge. \u201cI never saw the law as legal rules on the page.\u201d (That appreciation, in part, was biographical. Her judicial tenure was influenced by her early childhood in a tenement on Manhattan\u2019s lower East Side, by championing unpopular clients as a young lawyer, and by becoming a mother at age 39.)<\/p>\n<p>In the absence of overt gender discrimination, it is hard to get legal redress, said Gertner. For young women in the workplace today, \u201cit\u2019s the opacity of discrimination\u201d that makes advancement difficult, she said, instead of the stark realities of discrimination in the 1970s. Gertner said, \u201cIt was easier for me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With feminism stalled by social pressures at home and the workplace, she offered a radical idea. \u201cThe government needs to step up to the plate,\u201d Gertner said, beginning by providing incentives for day care that would make it easier for women to combine career and work.<\/p>\n<p>After all, there is a \u201cbusiness case\u201d to be made for gender equality in law firms and workplaces, \u201cbeyond the obvious need to tap a rich vein of talent,\u201d said Gertner. In a diverse world, workplace diversity adds to \u201cthe texture and the richness of the dialogue,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, feminism\u2019s mission of workplace parity has been stalled by the three factors of the maternal wall, implicit bias, and the opacity of discrimination, Gertner said.<\/p>\n<p>She said advocates have a list of things to do: parse workplace discrimination by collecting the right data; engage in collective action; and challenge the government to underwrite day care and other engines of cultural change.<\/p>\n<p>But all this is not enough. \u201cThe most important thing is: We have to be unsatisfied,\u201d Gertner told her largely female, professional audience. \u201cWe have to not believe that this was the accomplishment of the women\u2019s movement \u2014 that I\u2019m here and that you\u2019re here is somehow all we can achieve.\u201d<\/p>\n"],"rendered":"\n\t\t<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.law.harvard.edu\/faculty\/directory\/index.html?id=953\">Nancy Gertner<\/a> is a former federal judge, the author of a recent memoir (\u201cIn Defense of Women\u201d), a professor of practice at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.law.harvard.edu\/index.html\">Harvard Law School<\/a>, and an authority on sentencing, jury system discrimination, forensic evidence, and other legal areas.<\/p>\n<p>But go back to June 1971, the month she had a loud argument with her mother in their kitchen in Flushing, Queens, N.Y. Gertner was about to graduate from Yale Law School and assume a prestigious clerkship in Chicago. But her mother wanted her to take the test to be a Triborough Bridge toll taker \u2014 just in case.<\/p>\n<p>For a young woman lawyer at the time, \u201cjust in case\u201d wasn\u2019t a bad idea. The law was a man\u2019s world. But just a decade later, the culture seemed to swing toward what feminists worked for: parity. By the late 1980s, first-rate law firms were hiring men and women in equal numbers. \u201cWe thought the numbers would do everything,\u201d Gertner said during a lunchtime talk on Feb. 23 that was sponsored by the Women and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. (Weekly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hks.harvard.edu\/centers\/wappp\/news-events\/events-calendar\">talks<\/a> there are part of the program\u2019s mission to create gender equality.)<\/p>\n<p>But faith in the raw numbers turned out to be \u201cdramatically wrong,\u201d said Gertner. \u201cAdvancement has stalled.\u201d Half of all new lawyers are women, she said, but only 16 percent of equity partners in law firms are female. And of lawyers who leave the profession, most are women \u2014 and most do it because of family and social concerns.<\/p>\n<p>Gertner used the lens of the legal profession to speculate why, after earlier rapid advances, feminism\u2019s cultural agenda seems to have stalled. (Universities, she said, are in an analogous position, with plenty of women graduating as Ph.D.s, but few getting to the top of the academic game.)<\/p>\n<p>During her years on the bench from 1994 to 2011, Gertner got used to being trotted out at events as an example of progress. \u201cYou\u2019re supposed to say: \u2018Things are fabulous,\u2019 \u201d she told her audience at the Taubman Building\u2019s Cason Seminar Room. But they are not. The women\u2019s movement was not just about having more choices, she said, but about \u201crevolutionary\u201d changes in the workplace and at home that have not happened yet.<\/p>\n<p>In today\u2019s \u201cimperfectly transformed world,\u201d said Gertner, it is social expectations and an \u201cunfriendly workforce\u201d that mean a woman \u2014 if anyone \u2014 usually will stay home with the children. (She called this reality \u201cthe maternal wall.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>Gertner cited one study that showed 30 percent of women leaving the law, including 15 percent of equity partners, those with a financial stake in a firm. Another study, she said, showed that 34 percent of female law graduates have worked part time, compared with only 9 percent of their male counterparts.<\/p>\n<p>So without a corresponding transformation of family responsibilities, feminism is likely to stay stalled, she said. \u201cWe\u2019ve hit a wall.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not a situation that discrimination lawsuits can correct, said Gertner, because so many women are \u201cleaning out\u201d of their professions \u2014 that is, anticipating future pressures and so choosing career paths that enable them to leave the workplace more readily. (She gave as an example the woman who chooses a small family-practice firm over a larger one that presents more challenges and opportunities.) \u201cIf women are leaning out\u201d of their own volition, said Gertner, \u201cthen their failure to advance can\u2019t be the subject of a lawsuit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Besides, she added, overt gender discrimination in the workplace has gone the way of discos and bell-bottoms, \u201ca world that no longer exists.\u201d What is left, said Gertner, is \u201cimplicit bias,\u201d which has the same stalling effect on feminism as the maternal wall.<\/p>\n<p>There is also an issue with executing the law itself \u2014 a denial of the power of context. The gender discrimination lawsuits that do make it to court are weakened by a tendency to \u201cslice and dice\u201d the circumstances of alleged discrimination, said Gertner. \u201cYou don\u2019t look at them as a course of conduct,\u201d but as separate events. \u201cDiscrimination in the real world does not fit into the legal models we have.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One way to counteract this tendency in the law is to have judges on the bench who are aware of the way the world works. \u201cI had an appreciation of context,\u201d said Gertner of her time as a judge. \u201cI never saw the law as legal rules on the page.\u201d (That appreciation, in part, was biographical. Her judicial tenure was influenced by her early childhood in a tenement on Manhattan\u2019s lower East Side, by championing unpopular clients as a young lawyer, and by becoming a mother at age 39.)<\/p>\n<p>In the absence of overt gender discrimination, it is hard to get legal redress, said Gertner. For young women in the workplace today, \u201cit\u2019s the opacity of discrimination\u201d that makes advancement difficult, she said, instead of the stark realities of discrimination in the 1970s. Gertner said, \u201cIt was easier for me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With feminism stalled by social pressures at home and the workplace, she offered a radical idea. \u201cThe government needs to step up to the plate,\u201d Gertner said, beginning by providing incentives for day care that would make it easier for women to combine career and work.<\/p>\n<p>After all, there is a \u201cbusiness case\u201d to be made for gender equality in law firms and workplaces, \u201cbeyond the obvious need to tap a rich vein of talent,\u201d said Gertner. In a diverse world, workplace diversity adds to \u201cthe texture and the richness of the dialogue,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, feminism\u2019s mission of workplace parity has been stalled by the three factors of the maternal wall, implicit bias, and the opacity of discrimination, Gertner said.<\/p>\n<p>She said advocates have a list of things to do: parse workplace discrimination by collecting the right data; engage in collective action; and challenge the government to underwrite day care and other engines of cultural change.<\/p>\n<p>But all this is not enough. \u201cThe most important thing is: We have to be unsatisfied,\u201d Gertner told her largely female, professional audience. \u201cWe have to not believe that this was the accomplishment of the women\u2019s movement \u2014 that I\u2019m here and that you\u2019re here is somehow all we can achieve.\u201d<\/p>\n"}],"innerHTML":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-group alignwide\">\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n","innerContent":["\n<div class=\"wp-block-group alignwide\">\n\n","\n\n<\/div>\n"],"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-group alignwide has-global-padding is-content-justification-center is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n\n\n\t\t<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.law.harvard.edu\/faculty\/directory\/index.html?id=953\">Nancy Gertner<\/a> is a former federal judge, the author of a recent memoir (\u201cIn Defense of Women\u201d), a professor of practice at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.law.harvard.edu\/index.html\">Harvard Law School<\/a>, and an authority on sentencing, jury system discrimination, forensic evidence, and other legal areas.<\/p>\n<p>But go back to June 1971, the month she had a loud argument with her mother in their kitchen in Flushing, Queens, N.Y. Gertner was about to graduate from Yale Law School and assume a prestigious clerkship in Chicago. But her mother wanted her to take the test to be a Triborough Bridge toll taker \u2014 just in case.<\/p>\n<p>For a young woman lawyer at the time, \u201cjust in case\u201d wasn\u2019t a bad idea. The law was a man\u2019s world. But just a decade later, the culture seemed to swing toward what feminists worked for: parity. By the late 1980s, first-rate law firms were hiring men and women in equal numbers. \u201cWe thought the numbers would do everything,\u201d Gertner said during a lunchtime talk on Feb. 23 that was sponsored by the Women and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. (Weekly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hks.harvard.edu\/centers\/wappp\/news-events\/events-calendar\">talks<\/a> there are part of the program\u2019s mission to create gender equality.)<\/p>\n<p>But faith in the raw numbers turned out to be \u201cdramatically wrong,\u201d said Gertner. \u201cAdvancement has stalled.\u201d Half of all new lawyers are women, she said, but only 16 percent of equity partners in law firms are female. And of lawyers who leave the profession, most are women \u2014 and most do it because of family and social concerns.<\/p>\n<p>Gertner used the lens of the legal profession to speculate why, after earlier rapid advances, feminism\u2019s cultural agenda seems to have stalled. (Universities, she said, are in an analogous position, with plenty of women graduating as Ph.D.s, but few getting to the top of the academic game.)<\/p>\n<p>During her years on the bench from 1994 to 2011, Gertner got used to being trotted out at events as an example of progress. \u201cYou\u2019re supposed to say: \u2018Things are fabulous,\u2019 \u201d she told her audience at the Taubman Building\u2019s Cason Seminar Room. But they are not. The women\u2019s movement was not just about having more choices, she said, but about \u201crevolutionary\u201d changes in the workplace and at home that have not happened yet.<\/p>\n<p>In today\u2019s \u201cimperfectly transformed world,\u201d said Gertner, it is social expectations and an \u201cunfriendly workforce\u201d that mean a woman \u2014 if anyone \u2014 usually will stay home with the children. (She called this reality \u201cthe maternal wall.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>Gertner cited one study that showed 30 percent of women leaving the law, including 15 percent of equity partners, those with a financial stake in a firm. Another study, she said, showed that 34 percent of female law graduates have worked part time, compared with only 9 percent of their male counterparts.<\/p>\n<p>So without a corresponding transformation of family responsibilities, feminism is likely to stay stalled, she said. \u201cWe\u2019ve hit a wall.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not a situation that discrimination lawsuits can correct, said Gertner, because so many women are \u201cleaning out\u201d of their professions \u2014 that is, anticipating future pressures and so choosing career paths that enable them to leave the workplace more readily. (She gave as an example the woman who chooses a small family-practice firm over a larger one that presents more challenges and opportunities.) \u201cIf women are leaning out\u201d of their own volition, said Gertner, \u201cthen their failure to advance can\u2019t be the subject of a lawsuit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Besides, she added, overt gender discrimination in the workplace has gone the way of discos and bell-bottoms, \u201ca world that no longer exists.\u201d What is left, said Gertner, is \u201cimplicit bias,\u201d which has the same stalling effect on feminism as the maternal wall.<\/p>\n<p>There is also an issue with executing the law itself \u2014 a denial of the power of context. The gender discrimination lawsuits that do make it to court are weakened by a tendency to \u201cslice and dice\u201d the circumstances of alleged discrimination, said Gertner. \u201cYou don\u2019t look at them as a course of conduct,\u201d but as separate events. \u201cDiscrimination in the real world does not fit into the legal models we have.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One way to counteract this tendency in the law is to have judges on the bench who are aware of the way the world works. \u201cI had an appreciation of context,\u201d said Gertner of her time as a judge. \u201cI never saw the law as legal rules on the page.\u201d (That appreciation, in part, was biographical. Her judicial tenure was influenced by her early childhood in a tenement on Manhattan\u2019s lower East Side, by championing unpopular clients as a young lawyer, and by becoming a mother at age 39.)<\/p>\n<p>In the absence of overt gender discrimination, it is hard to get legal redress, said Gertner. For young women in the workplace today, \u201cit\u2019s the opacity of discrimination\u201d that makes advancement difficult, she said, instead of the stark realities of discrimination in the 1970s. Gertner said, \u201cIt was easier for me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With feminism stalled by social pressures at home and the workplace, she offered a radical idea. \u201cThe government needs to step up to the plate,\u201d Gertner said, beginning by providing incentives for day care that would make it easier for women to combine career and work.<\/p>\n<p>After all, there is a \u201cbusiness case\u201d to be made for gender equality in law firms and workplaces, \u201cbeyond the obvious need to tap a rich vein of talent,\u201d said Gertner. In a diverse world, workplace diversity adds to \u201cthe texture and the richness of the dialogue,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, feminism\u2019s mission of workplace parity has been stalled by the three factors of the maternal wall, implicit bias, and the opacity of discrimination, Gertner said.<\/p>\n<p>She said advocates have a list of things to do: parse workplace discrimination by collecting the right data; engage in collective action; and challenge the government to underwrite day care and other engines of cultural change.<\/p>\n<p>But all this is not enough. \u201cThe most important thing is: We have to be unsatisfied,\u201d Gertner told her largely female, professional audience. \u201cWe have to not believe that this was the accomplishment of the women\u2019s movement \u2014 that I\u2019m here and that you\u2019re here is somehow all we can achieve.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>\n"}},"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":153466,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2014\/03\/inspiring-women\/","url_meta":{"origin":103222,"position":0},"title":"Inspiring women","author":"harvardgazette","date":"March 7, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"\u201cInspiring Change, Inspiring Us\u201d is a series of portraits on view at Harvard Law School through March 14 in honor of International Women\u2019s Day.","rel":"","context":"In "Nation & World"","block_context":{"text":"Nation & World","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/nation-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/030614_women_portraits_047_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/030614_women_portraits_047_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, 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https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/hsph-sebelius_605.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":103584,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2012\/03\/on-climate-issues-look-to-states\/","url_meta":{"origin":103222,"position":2},"title":"On climate issues, look to states","author":"harvardgazette","date":"March 1, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The head of California\u2019s air pollution regulatory board said Feb. 27 that with climate change action stalled in Washington, D.C., the states are taking the lead in creating ways to reduce carbon emissions.","rel":"","context":"In "Science & Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Science & Tech","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/science-technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/022512_lowcarbon_056_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/022512_lowcarbon_056_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/022512_lowcarbon_056_605.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":147370,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2013\/09\/women-in-the-law\/","url_meta":{"origin":103222,"position":3},"title":"Women in the law","author":"harvardgazette","date":"September 30, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Hundreds of women convened at Harvard Law School for a weekend event celebrating 60 years of women at the institution.","rel":"","context":"In "Nation & World"","block_context":{"text":"Nation & World","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/nation-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/susan_hls_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/susan_hls_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/susan_hls_605.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":108590,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2012\/04\/hard-earned-gains-for-women-at-harvard\/","url_meta":{"origin":103222,"position":4},"title":"Hard-earned gains for women at Harvard","author":"harvardgazette","date":"April 26, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, professor emerita of history and American studies at Smith College, examined the shifting gender landscape at Harvard during a talk at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.","rel":"","context":"In "Arts & Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Arts & Culture","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/arts-humanities\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/042312_complicated_204_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/042312_complicated_204_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/042312_complicated_204_605.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":183781,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2016\/05\/from-around-the-world-and-across-harvard\/","url_meta":{"origin":103222,"position":5},"title":"From around the world and across Harvard","author":"harvardgazette","date":"May 18, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study has named 50 fellows for the 2016-17 academic year. Eleven of the incoming class are Harvard faculty.","rel":"","context":"In "Campus & Community"","block_context":{"text":"Campus & Community","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/campus-community\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/radcliffebyerlyhall_photobykevingrady_900_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/radcliffebyerlyhall_photobykevingrady_900_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/radcliffebyerlyhall_photobykevingrady_900_605.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105622744"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103222"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":275342,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103222\/revisions\/275342"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103222"},{"taxonomy":"format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gazette-formats?post=103222"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=103222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}