Do you think that the legal profession is too feminine? No, this is not a trick question. I am interested in your opinion because a conservative commentator, Helen Andrews, asserts that our profession is being feminized, to the profession’s detriment.
Andrews thinks all professions are being feminized, due to “wokeness,” but she leans most heavily on the legal profession. Cancel culture is female, she says, and it is what women do when there are enough of us in a given field. Everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition. Wokeness, says Andrews, is “simply feminine patterns of behavior applied to institutions where women were few in number until recently.” Qualities that women see as positive, Andrews says are negative: women use collaboration and consensus to reach decisions, while men are not afraid to engage in open warfare.
According to Andrews, another failing of women is the inability to compartmentalize, something that men are very good at. Wokeness, she says, is an inability to compartmentalize, pointing out, as an example, the differences between men and women in dispute resolution.
When men are finished fighting and one side or the other has won, they are quicker to reconcile and to move forward in peace. Really? Not my experience.
I won’t tell you about the sore loser male attorney who yelled at me because he hadn’t received the settlement check yet and it wasn’t due until a certain date. How many sore losers are men? Whereas, according to Andrews, women are slower to accept resolution. Who pouts more? How many stereotypes fit on the head of her theses?
Andrews devotes much of her criticism to the legal profession and, as the older lawyers (of course men) retire and die, it will be the female majority in charge of the profession. Ha! Don’t we wish. With the eviscerating of the DEI initiatives, the number of women in law leadership roles will probably be rolled back with the implicit or explicit blessing of the current administration.
Andrews fears that the rule of law will not survive feminization. Why? She says that the rule of law can only survive in a world where precedent must be followed and appeals to sympathies must be ignored. What world is she living in? Precedent being followed? Please. She is right that appeals to doing the right thing are being ignored. How many Supreme Court cases do I need to cite? And as long as the Supreme Court is majority male and majority conservative, she has nothing to worry about.
Way back when in dinosaur times (e.g., 1970) as more women started entering law school and then the profession, the thought was that women’s impact would be “minor,” as Andrews puts it. But it’s not, and many of us think that is cause for celebration, not denigration. A workplace where women have equal opportunity? What a concept! Contrary to Andrews’ theory, many women have moved ahead based on merit, not on gender, just as many men have moved ahead punching their tickets issued by the “good old boys” in the country club, the locker room or all those private clubs that excluded women until laws forced changes, to the dismay of many members.
Feminization, to Andrews, is not something that has happened organically. It is, she says, social engineering. Is Andrews that naive to believe that discrimination against women in the workplace hasn’t happened and won’t continue to happen? That sexual discrimination has been erased from our society? I don’t think that there is any woman lawyer in our profession or any other, who wouldn’t be delighted if that was the case, but it’s not, and it’s a pipe dream. It’s not wokeness, it’s wake-up-ness.
Men can be aggressive, and that’s just peachy. Women who are aggressive are called by any number of unflattering names as they rise in the profession. A little discrimination there? Andrews calls for the restoration of what she calls “fair rules.” and contends that “Right now we have a nominally meritocratic system in which it is illegal for women to lose. Let’s make hiring meritocratic in substance and not just name, and we will see how it shakes out. Make it legal to have a masculine office culture again.”
Yes, definitely, let’s return to that. A masculine office culture full of bullying, yelling, and hollering, leering, touching, and other boorish behavior.
Women lawyers have worked hard to achieve. Contrary to what Andrews believes, it’s not the feminization of the profession, it’s the humanization of it. She admits she is not a lawyer, so her opinions are observational, not participatory. Go ahead, please walk a mile in my lawyer shoes of almost 50 years (and I am not even including the preceding three years of law school). I am a size 7B.
Jill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for over 40 years. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact — it’s not always civil. You can reach her by email at oldladylawyer@gmail.com.
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