Re: Are there enough women in the legal profession?

Description: It's a good thing when you lose count.

Transcript:

The numbers are very high, but the distribution is very skewed as is true in other prestigious professions. In law schools now, I believe that in most schools and across the law student population, generally women are at least 50% of the student body, if not higher. We are also so well represented at the faculty level that I lose count and that is great. When you no longer have to count as opposed to my seven years of higher education at Harvard college and law school where I had not a single female professor at either the law school or the college and I was painfully aware of the number of female students in both places. I went to Harvard college when women students were separately admitted under a strict 4:1 ratio, men to women and at the law school at the time, we were about 10% of the student body. So, that has changed dramatically. A lot of barriers have been crashed. It was not until 1981 that we had the first female supreme court justice, but those numbers are still very small and Justice Ginsburg[Phonetic] is now complaining with force and reason about being the token female member of the supreme court and we know the judges and I would say in politics women are particularly underrepresented, in the corporate world, particularly underrepresented. I think we are doing quite well on law faculties and as law school deans.

 

 

Recorded On: 2/14/08