the glass ceiling: pierced or still intact?

 

I suspect this phenomenon applies pretty universally across all professions, but because I am immersed in the law world, I notice the pervasiveness of this problem in the legal industry.

In our perfect world fantasy, women are increasingly taking control of corporate board positions and professional rankings. We rejoice in the prospect of breaking the glass ceiling and finally being “equal” to men. If we examine things closely, we will see that this is clearly not the case. In a NYTimes editorial [nytimes.com], the statistics for law firms was cited as follows: “[i]n law firms, women make up 45 percent of associates but only 15 percent of equity partners and 6 percent of equity partners at the 200 largest firms.”

We have not arrived at a time when women are equally represented in the workplace. Of course, several reasons account for this. First and possibly most important, women with children are heavily restrained from fully participating in the workplace because they not only must juggle motherhood and full time working hours, but they must battle predisposed assumptions of their ability to even be in the workplace. “[T]hey often have to show more evidence of achievement than men” and “the median income [for women] is 74 percent of what men earn,” according to the editorial.

I don’t have the solution to the problem, because I confess that the prospect of working in a law firm jungle while raising young children is near impossible. But what if law firms and other companies are willing to facilitate things for women by allowing more flexibility in schedules? It seems tedious at first, but “[l]egal employers should understand that unless they retain a higher share of women, the profession will continue to lose talented lawyers.” The world will lose talented and strong women who would have otherwise been able to contribute to their companies.