Ederlina Co on "Weathering Invisible Labor"

Ederlina Co has published Weathering Invisible Labor in volume 51 of the Southwestern Law Review (2022). The abstract previews: 

Professor Meera Deo’s Unequal Profession: Race and Gender in Legal Academia powerfully demonstrates how the legal academy has adopted many of American society’s social hierarchies as they relate to race and gender. Inspired by Unequal Profession and using a Critical Race Feminism framework, this Essay centers on women of color professors and the problem of invisible labor in legal academia.

Although for many women of color professors invisible labor involves a labor of love, this Essay contends that the legal academy’s unwillingness to recognize it in a meaningful manner marginalizes women of color professors, devalues how important invisible labor is to law students, law schools, and the legal profession, and perpetuates a raceXgender institutional bias. This Essay recommends steps that law school administrators and allies can take immediately to recognize invisible labor but also suggests that the time has come for the legal academy to begin to reexamine how it values “service” more broadly.

The article concludes that: 

Despite the depth of time and commitment that women of color professors devote to invisible labor and the value law students, law schools, and the legal profession take from it, the legal academy does not meaningfully appreciate it as work. The ongoing failure to recognize and credit invisible labor in many law schools is a form of raceXgender institutional bias that marginalizes women of color professors and diminishes the importance of this work. Although the legal academy has tracked much of American society’s progress when it comes to providing equal opportunity for women of color professors, the academy is not immune from American society’s present-day raceXgender challenges. In the same way many of us expect American institutions to work to address inequalities and inequities in society, the academy must be equally diligent about addressing them in our own institution.