[UPDATE] Conference Recap Part I: Now with video!
We are grateful to YLS third-year student and conference volunteer
Meagan Reed for the following recap of the introduction and first panel
that took place on Friday, May 27.
Introduction & Panel I: Defining the "Opt Out" Problem
As
Yale Law Women President Jennifer Broxmeyer and Conference Co-Chairs
Jill Habig and Diana Rusk explained in their introduction, statistics
help to explain why we can't seem to talk about women in the legal profession without talking about women leaving the
legal profession: Despite comprising 50% of graduating law school
classes, women hold only 20% of the top-level jobs (judge, general
counsel at major corporations, equity partner at law firms, etc.). The
first panel of the conference focused on responses to Lisa Belkin's
infamous New York Times article, "The Opt Out Revolution,"
which posited that this gender gap was due to highly-educated,
professional women voluntarily choosing family life over careers.
The panel, comprised of panelists E.J. Graff (a journalist), Pam
Stone (a sociologist), Paulette Brown (in private practice), and Audrey
Bracey Deegan (a director at Deloitte Consulting) and moderator Vicki
Schultz (a Yale Law professor), resoundingly challenged the notion that
women are in fact choosing to leave their careers, pointing out that:
- despite consistent media coverage about "women returning to the
home" since the 1950s, trends in the proportion of mothers who work
have actually steadily increased, not decreased;
- there is a disconnect between ex-career women's rhetoric (i.e. they
express staying home as a "choice") and their reasons for leaving their
professions (i.e. inflexibility in the workplace, being passed over for
meaningful assignments, etc.);
- so-called "opting out" is a distinct racial and socieconomic
phenomenon that does not describe the situation faced by the vast
majority of working women;
- the "opt out" myth is based in the idea that women's true role is in the family, whereas work is a choice that only fits around family
life, and thus ignores the
structural roots of the clash between gender, parenting, and work expectations; and
- former working mothers frequently express dissatisfaction with
domestic life (Betty Friedan-style), direct their career skills/needs
into potentially imbalanced forms of parenting ("intensive mothering"),
and have more trouble re-integrating into the work force than they
anticipate.
Ms. Brown discussed the marginalization of women of color within
firms and applied the "pushed out" phenomenon to them as well, noting
that 81% of women of color employed by law firms left their jobs within
five years, while Ms. Deegan responded with the belief that law firms
could be persuaded to modify policies that are driving associates away
upon learning of the "costs of attrition" of particular groups (such as
women of color and working mothers), defining "opting out" as a
"business problem" and not a "women's problem."
All of the panelists expressed hope for a "paradigm shift" in
work/family social structures, such that flexible employment hours and
non-linear advancement tracks (such as those adopted in Deloitte's
trademarked Mass Career Customization system) would become the norm
rather than the currently stigmatized path for a "second class" of
employees with multiple responsibilities to family and career, which
panelists viewed as contributing to some professional women's departure
from the workforce.
VIDEO LINKS:
Introductory remarks: http://ylsqtss.law.yale.edu:8080/qtmedia/ylw/OptOutIntro032709_s.mov
Defining the Problem: http://ylsqtss.law.yale.edu:8080/qtmedia/ylw/OptOutPanel032709_s.mov