Gender and the Law Blog

Abortion Care Network Report: "Communities Need Clinics: There is No Access Without Independent Abortion Care Providers"

Abortion Care Network has published a 2024 report titled, "Communities Need Clinics: There is No Access Without Independent Abortion Care Providers." Key excerpts from the report are provided below: 

In addition to providing the majority of abortions in the U.S., independent providers operate the majority of abortion clinics in the states that are most politically hostile to abortion.  

* * *

Access to abortion care throughout pregnancy has depended on independent abortion clinics for decades, and this remains true. Even after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, independent clinics make up 62 percent of all US clinics that provide abortion after the first trimester. Independent clinics represent 67 percent of all clinics that provide care at and after 16 weeks of pregnancy, 71 percent of clinics providing care at and after 19 weeks of pregnancy, and 88 percent of clinics that provide care at or after 22 weeks of pregnancy. After 26 weeks of pregnancy, the only clinics that provide abortion care are independent. Though most abortions occur in the first trimester of pregnancy, there are many reasons that people need abortions in the second and third trimesters, including delays caused by abortion restrictions, a lack of resources, increased clinic wait times, and factors related to health, safety, and viability.

* * *

Independent abortion clinics are more likely to provide both medication and in-clinic abortion care as options. Seventy-six percent of brick-and-mortar independent clinics offer both medication and in-clinic abortion care, as compared to Planned Parenthood, where both medication and in-clinic abortion care are available at only 38 percent of affiliated clinics.

* * *

Abortion Care Network identified 76 independent abortion clinic closures between 2022 and 2024. Forty-two independent clinics closed in 2022, and 23 clinics closed in 2023. As of November 2024, there have been 11 confirmed independent clinic closures in 2024.

* * *

In states where abortion remains legal, medically unnecessary restrictions, financial barriers, and the constant threat of anti-abortion extremism make it challenging for clinics to keep their doors open. Clinics in these states are not immune to the threat of closure: Eight out of the 11 (70 percent) independent clinics forced to close in 2024 were in states considered legally “protective” or “very protective.” 

* * *

The fact that no fewer than 32 independent brick-and-mortar clinics have opened since Roe was overturned shows the dedication and determination of independent providers. These providers have had to navigate varying state regulations (which often differ from medical best practices), build connections in new communities, relocate or hire staff, and cover the significant costs of opening and running a medical practice—costs that include security and legal demands not required of other health care professionals.

The report advocates for action items supporting independent clinics. 

 

 

New Book, "Give Her Credit" and the Untold Story of a Women's Bank

Grace L. Williams, Give Her Credit: The Untold Account of a Women's Bank That Empowered a Generation

The galvanizing true story of a group of remarkable women in the 1970s male-run world of business, banking, and finance. They didn’t play by the rules. They changed them and made history.

In the 1970s, a new wave of feminism was sweeping America. But in the boys’ club of banking and finance, women were still infantilized—no credit without a male cosigner, and their income was dismissed as unreliable. If bankers weren’t going to accommodate women, then women had to take control of their own futures. In 1978 in Denver, Colorado, the opening of the Women’s Bank changed everything.

It was helmed by bank officer B. LaRae Orullian and the brainchild of whip-smart entrepreneur Carol Green, who forged a groundbreaking path with their headstrong colleagues, among them: Judi Foster, investment research whiz; Edna Mosley, unyielding civil rights advocate with the NAACP; Mary Roebling, renowned financial executive; Betty Freedman, a socialite and fundraiser; and Gail Schoettler, a formidable Denver mover and shaker for social justice. Coming together and facing their own unique road to revolution, they built the most successful female-run bank in the nation. It wasn’t easy.

Give Her Credit follows the challenges, uphill battles, and achievements of some of the enterprising women of Denver who broke boundaries, inspired millions, and afforded opportunities for every marginalized citizen in the country. It’s about time their untold story was told.

Feminist Philosophies of Copyright and Gender and the Politics of Proof

Carys J. Craig, Copyright and Gender: Feminist Philosophies and the Politics of Proof, forthcoming in Jessica Lai & Kathy Bowrey, A Research Agenda for Intellectual Property and Gender (Edward Elgar, 2025)

This chapter considers copyright and gender through a critical feminist frame. Part 1 surveys some feminist philosophical insights into copyright law's subject matter (original, fixed expression) and its protagonist (the independent rights-bearing author). It explains that core elements of the copyright system thereby encode a masculinist understanding of both creativity and selfhood. Part 2 turns to the matter of proof, pointing to a growing body of evidence that seeks to demonstrate the gendered nature and implications of copyright law. While acknowledging its political and persuasive potential, this chapter problematises the empirical turn in copyright and gender research and policymaking. It cautions that a focus on measuring inequality and quantifying gender disparities could undermine the more fundamental and transformational project of unsettling the copyright status quo. Ultimately, it concludes that the feminist copyright agenda should remain centred around the radical critique of a system that produces inequality and exclusion by design.

Charitable Giving to Women's and Girls' Organizations Represents only 1.9 Percent of Giving

Giving to Women’s and Girls’ Organizations Exceeds $10 Billion for First Time yet Still Represents 1.9 Percent of Charitable Giving in the U.S.

The Women’s Philanthropy Institute (WPI) at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy today released its sixth annual Women & Girls Index (WGI), the only systematically generated, comprehensive index that measures charitable giving to organizations dedicated to women and girls in the U.S., including the amount of philanthropic support they receive from individuals, foundations, and corporations. The 2024 WGI adds finalized IRS data from 2021(the last year for which financial data is available) across 54,588 organizations—providing an analysis on the decade 2012 to 2021 that highlights both gaps and growth in philanthropic support for women and girls.

For the first time, women’s and girls’ organizations surpassed $10 billion in giving as they received $10.2 billion in philanthropic support in 2021. This historic milestone is set against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic’s ongoing disproportionate impact on women, particularly women of color and those in low-wage jobs, and ongoing discussions about the systemic barriers to gender equity. While awareness of gender-focused issues such as pay equity and reproductive rights has grown, overall charitable giving that supports women and girls remains relatively small at 1.9% of total giving. This statistic highlights the continued need for greater philanthropic support across the full spectrum of causes that improve the lives of women and girls.

Rethinking Law and Literature to Define Narrative Justice for MeToo and Other Fields

Geeta Tewari, MeToo: Rethinking Law and Literature to Define Narrative Justice, 102 Oregon L. Rev. 489 (2024) 

The law and literature movement is transforming into something new. This Article will discuss what that newness is, how it came about, and the different shapes it takes to provide the legal community with a platform to contribute to a working definition for narrative justice. Creatively, technologically, and economically, public institutions and legal culture are rethinking the value of voice and story. With concrete examples of innovations and social movements, this Article will demonstrate how both action and inaction have propelled us as a society toward urgency in defining and claiming narrative justice. The Introduction canvasses U.S. case law to discuss patterns of narrative incorporation—or the concerning lack thereof. Recently, we have seen a new growth in this field: an emphasis by activists, artists, and academics, among others internationally, on applying voice, story, and journey to present conflicts and problems. The next Part discusses the critical points where public and private institutions, as well as individual citizens, have catalyzed to birth a new field of narrative justice. Specifically, I discuss the #MeToo movement, as well as cities’ work, community, individual empowerment, recent interdisciplinary legal scholarship, and teaching models, which are all analyzed for their inclusion of narrative. City government “storytellers” and the action of the #MeToo movement are two rich examples of law and literature’s expansion to activism through narrative justice. Finally, in Part IV, I dissect the lack of narrative presently in corporate law and the growing legal field of environmental, social, and governance advising, which should include the concept of narrative justice. This Article concludes with a proposal for a working definition and function of narrative justice, based on the examples reviewed herein as they relate to each other, the precipitating field of law and literature, and the need for updated terminology and pedagogy to further advance the practice of law as a moral, ethical, and just profession.

Women Kicked Off Plane for Wearing Crop Tops

Sexist Flight Attendant Boots Female Passengers Over Crop Tops

Two female passengers have accused a Spirit Airlines flight attendant of sexism after he allegedly kicked them off a plane for their choice of dress, as seen in a viral Instagram video.

“It’s just humiliating having to be escorted and treated like a criminal just because we were wearing crop tops,” one of the flyers, named Tara, told the Daily Mail while detailing the alleged blouse arrest.

She and her friend Teresa were flying from Los Angeles to New Orleans to celebrate the former’s birthday when the crewmember singled them out.***

According to the airline’s contract of carriage, a passenger may be asked to vacate the aircraft if “inadequately clothed” or if their attire “is lewd, obscene, or offensive in nature.”

Spirit Airlines Passengers Claimed They Were Kicked Off Plane by Male Flight Attendant for Wearing Crop Tops

Addressing Gender Biases and Barriers to Women's Leadership in Mass Tort Multidistrict Litigation

Stephanie Iken, Addressing Biases and Barriers: Advancing Women in Mass Tort MDL Leadership 

The legal profession grapples with profound gender disparities, particularly evident in leadership roles within mass tort litigation. This article delves into the myriad biases and systemic barriers that hinder women's advancement in legal leadership, shedding light on the challenges they face and proposing strategies for fostering gender equity.

The analysis begins by examining the lack of representation of women in mass tort leadership, despite their significant presence in law school cohorts. Data reveals stark disparities in the appointment rates of women to leadership positions, underscoring systemic biases entrenched within the legal industry. Biases such as the Prove-It-Again Bias, Tightrope Bias, and Maternal Wall contribute to the underrepresentation of women in leadership roles, perpetuating a cycle of discrimination and marginalization.

The Prove-It-Again Bias dictates that women must continually prove their competence and dedication, facing greater scrutiny and exhaustion than their male counterparts. Women experience challenges in asserting their ideas and contributions, often facing dismissal or attribution of their work to others. Moreover, the Tightrope Bias imposes restrictive standards on women's behavior, forcing them to navigate contradictory expectations and behaviors. The Maternal Wall presents additional barriers, as women encounter biases against mothers and birthing persons, leading to challenges in balancing family and career aspirations.

The article further explores biases against women in leadership roles, including interruptions, the "Boys Club" mentality, dismissal of accomplishments, and delegation of stereotypical tasks. These biases perpetuate gender inequalities and hinder women's career advancement, creating environments where women's voices are silenced, and their contributions undervalued.

The gender pay gap exacerbates disparities, with women overwhelmingly paid less for equal work, stifling their economic empowerment and career progression. Sexual harassment and networking challenges further compound these inequalities, creating hostile environments that deter women from pursuing leadership roles.

However, amidst these challenges, the article highlights initiatives and strategies for advancing women in legal leadership. Mentorship programs, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and policy reforms emerge as critical tools for fostering gender equity and dismantling systemic biases. By creating inclusive environments, challenging traditional norms, and prioritizing the well-being of female professionals, the legal profession can work towards creating a more diverse and equitable future for women in leadership roles.

In conclusion, the article calls for transformative action to address biases and barriers hindering women's advancement in legal leadership. By acknowledging and confronting systemic inequalities, implementing inclusive practices, and advocating for policy reforms, the legal profession can strive towards a future where women are equally represented and empowered in leadership roles within mass tort litigation and beyond.

Women and Corporate Governance: Time Horizons and Stakeholder Analysis

June Carbone, Women and Corporate Governance: Time Horizons and Stakeholder Analysis, Chicago-Kent Law Review, Forthcoming

The study of gender intrinsically involves consideration of time. The assumption of childcare responsibilities, whether done by men or women, requires a different orientation toward the life course that marshals parental time and resources for investment in the early childhood years with the expectation of a payoff later in time. For primary breadwinners, this may involve a willingness to seize immediate gains in income or status during the critical childrearing years in exchange for greater risk or less security in the future. For primary caretakers, the same considerations may involve a greater preference for secure, flexible, or collaborative employment during the peak childrearing years even if it involves lower immediate income and fewer opportunities for personal advancement. These different temporal dimensions overlap with traditional gender stereotypes: supposedly masculine preferences for competition, particularly zero-sum competition tied to short-term metrics, versus feminine collaboration tied to longer-term institutional interests; masculine-coded risk-taking tied to individual status gains versus the security that comes from group membership and mutual support; and investment in individual advancement versus communal well-being. 

Consideration of the temporal dimension underlying gendered orientations toward the life cycle—and evaluation of the fate of women as a product of these different time horizons—also sheds a different light on the relationship between shareholder interests and those of other stakeholders such as workers and customers. Much of what is done in the name of shareholder primacy advances the interests of short-term shareholders at the expense, not only of other stakeholders, but of medium- to longer-term shareholders. Moreover, many of the divisions among employees—both within management and within line positions—involve distinctions between those with long-term interests in firm stability and those with a more contingent or transactional relationship to a given firm. What unites the short-term interest of activist shareholders and the fate of employees, however, is not simply corporate theory—finance scholars debate whether markets will ultimately correct for potentially counterproductive short-term actions—but rather the executive compensation systems and firm cultures that implement such perspectives. These systems have consequences that extend well beyond individual management decisions, changing the nature of the executives and the executive mindsets that thrive in such environments. Focusing on the ways that distinctions between short-term and long-term perspectives overlap with gendered employment values has a series of consequences for the debate about the relationship between corporate theory and labor and employment law.

Eighth Circuit in Case of First Impression Rules Employee Does not Have to Arbitrate Claims She was Sexually Harassed and Raped by Chipotle Co-Worker

Chipotle Can't Force Arbitration of Workplace Rape Claim, US Court Rules

A U.S. appeals court on Monday said a former Chipotle Mexican Grill employee does not have to arbitrate claims that she was sexually harassed and raped by a coworker, because she sued the restaurant chain after a federal law took effect banning agreements to keep such claims out of court.

 

A unanimous three-judge panel, opens new tab of the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the law that passed Congress with bipartisan support in 2022 applies to any lawsuit filed after it was enacted, rejecting Chipotle's claim that it only covers conduct that occurred after that date.

 

The ruling is the first of its kind by a federal appeals court and could salvage some pending cases and invite new ones involving conduct that occurred prior to the adoption of the law. A California state appeals court in January also said the federal ban applies based on the date a lawsuit is filed and not when the underlying conduct occurs.

 

The plaintiff says a coworker raped her in the bathroom at a Rochester, Minnesota, restaurant in 2021 after verbally harassing her for months, and that Chipotle failed to investigate or respond after she told a manager about the assault. She had signed an agreement to arbitrate employment-related disputes when she was hired, and initially sued Chipotle a few months after the federal law took effect. ***

 

Chipotle denied wrongdoing and moved to send the case to arbitration, citing the agreement the plaintiff had signed. But U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank in St. Paul last year said the agreement could not be enforced because of the federal ban on mandatory arbitration of harassment and assault claims.

 

The 8th Circuit on Monday affirmed. The law applies to "disputes" that arise on or after its effective date, and that term applies to an actual "conflict or controversy," such as a lawsuit, the court said.

 

Black Women Reporters Sue Chicago Tribune for Pay Discrimination

Wash Post, Journalists Sue Chicago Tribune Owner Alleging Pay Discrimination

Chicago Tribune journalists filed suit Thursday against the newspaper’s owner, claiming it has knowingly paid them less than their White or male counterparts.

The federal lawsuit, filed as a class-action claim, seeks back pay for most Black and female reporters at the newspaper over the past five years, and to remedy salary discrepancies for those currently working at the paper.

“My beat has been about Black and Brown communities and inequities — the disparities, the wealth gap, homeownership, all of that,” said reporter Darcel Rockett, one of the seven named plaintiffs. “And to report on this routinely and then, in your own house, for it to fall on deaf ears … it’s debilitating.”

In 13 years, she told The Post, she has received one raise.

The suit is the latest escalation in the tensions between Alden Global Capital — which purchased the Tribune in 2021 on its rapid path to becoming one of the largest newspaper owners in the country — and the journalists who work for it. But it also represents years of frustration with past corporate owners.

Study Finds that Effects of California's Paid Family Leave Act Did Not Help Women's Careers and Gender Pay Gap

Martha Bailey, Tanya Byker, Elena Patel, Shanthi Ramnath, The Long-Run Effects of California's Paid Family Leave Act on Women's Careers and Childbearing: New Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design and U.S. Tax Data" 

We use administrative tax data to analyze the cumulative, long-run effects of California's 2004 Paid Family Leave Act (CPFL) on women's employment, earnings, and childbearing.***

A growing body of evidence suggests that the gender gap in pay emerges abruptly at motherhood, as new mothers work less for pay in order to increase their caregiving at home. These differences are also evident in U.S. tax data, which show that the “child penalty” for women in annual wage earnings grows sharply after their first child is born.

Academics and policymakers have mobilized around this issue, citing the absence of paid family leave in the United States as a major obstacle to gender equity in the labor market. Paid family leave policies, they argue, could enable workers to take longer leaves to care for newborns instead of dropping out of the labor force. Remaining attached to employers could help workers retain job- and firm-specific human capital and decrease skill depreciation, minimizing wage losses due to caregiving. Because more women leave the labor force than men for caregiving reasons, formalizing paid leave policies could narrow the gender gap in pay.***

Our findings challenge the conventional wisdom that paid leave benefits improve women’s short- or long-term career outcomes. In fact, CPFL significantly decreased employment and earnings of first-time mothers in the short run. First-time mothers taking up paid leave under CPFL were 6 percent less likely to be employed and earned 13 percent less during the first three years after giving birth. Moreover, we find evidence that these earnings effects persisted, with wage earnings remaining 13 percent lower nine to 12 years later.

A Feminist Approach to Competition Law and Policy

Kati Cseres, Feminist Competition Law, Cambridge Handbook on the Theoretical Foundations of Antitrust and Competition Law (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2024)

This paper takes up the challenge to show what a feminist approach to competition law and policy is, and what its contribution can be to the scholarship of competition law.

Despite increasing attention from academics and policy makers concerning the intersection of gender equality and competition law, most debates and discussions add gender to the analytical framework, economic calculation or survey, but fail to investigate the gender divisions that deeply bifurcate the structure of modern society, including legal rules, formal and informal institutions and enforcement practices. The implications of gendered lives, experiences and social realities on people’s preferences, choices and decisions in markets remain outside of such discussions. Therefore, feminist methodology and feminist social science research on gendered social realities remains a blind spot in current debates and discussions.

Remarkably, a similar blind spot exists in the diverse strands of feminist social science research, notably feminist legal and economic scholarship that has already been applied to various legal fields, but have engaged less thoroughly with the legal frameworks of market processes. Therefore, competition law has been a blind spot in these investigations so far.

By focusing on the central role of gender and women’s experiences, feminists take a contextualized lens and draw attention to the complexity of the economy, economic activities and the embeddedness of markets in broader social, economic and political contexts. Their analysis is multidimensional and pluralist, with a strong focus on human diversity and intersectionality. Feminist approaches go beyond merely adding gender to the analysis and investigate the deeper layers of legal rules, economic models and enforcement practices that entrench gendered power structures, dynamics, institutional arrangements and produce and reproduce various forms of inequalities.

From the richness of feminist methodologies, I draw on feminist legal theory, feminist (institutional) economics and feminist political economy to demonstrate how feminist approaches probe the alleged ‘neutrality’ and objectivity of competition law and to unpack the gendered nature (and impact) of its underlying legal rules, concepts and enforcement practices. I explore various assumptions embedded in existing competition rules and concepts, show which gender-based consequences the application of these rules and concepts may have and how policy makers and enforcers could implement gender into the substantive analysis of specific cases as well as into the procedures and institutional arrangements in the enforcement of competition law.

I argue that feminists’ analytical lens is, in fact, intimately related to the analytical lens of competition law. The focus of their analysis concern power structures and dynamics, investigate how various social and economic actors are impacted through these power inequalities and strive to control excessive power and change existing social, economic and political structures. However, the site and scope of their analysis differs. Competition law is concerned with market processes, structures and activities, while feminists repeatedly and forcefully called attention to those activities, processes and arrangements that lie outside of the market and the economy.

Frontier Airlines Settles Pregnancy and Breastfeeding Discrimination Lawsuit

Frontier Airlines Settles Pregnancy, Breastfeeding Discrimination Lawsuit

Frontier Airlines will settle a federal lawsuit filed by five pilots who accused the Denver-based airline of discriminating against them during pregnancy and while breastfeeding.

Through the settlement, Frontier will allow pilots to pump breastmilk in the cockpit during noncritical phases of a flight and will update or comply with existing policies that impact pregnant and lactating employees.

It is one of the first airlines to allow pilots to pump during flights, according to a Monday news release from the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Colorado, Denver-based legal nonprofit Towards Justice and the firm Holwell Shuster & Goldberg.

Settling the lawsuit filed in December 2019 “does not admit any liability” by Frontier, according to the news release.

In a statement, ACLU Center for Liberty staff attorney Aditi Fruitwala said the organization is proud to come to an agreement that will benefit pregnant and lactating workers now and in the future.

Women in Iceland Go on Strike Against Gender Inequality

NYT, Women in Iceland Go on Strike Against Gender Inequality

Tens of thousands of women and nonbinary people in Iceland were expected to join a one-day strike on Tuesday, which organizers called the country’s largest effort to protest workplace inequality in nearly five decades.

Iceland is a global leader in gender equality but still has a long way to go, said Freyja Steingrímsdóttir, a spokeswoman for the Icelandic Federation of Public Workers, the country’s largest federation of public worker unions.

“Iceland is often viewed as some sort of equality paradise,” Ms. Steingrímsdóttir, an organizer of the strike, said. “If we’re going to live up to that name, we need to move forward and really be the best we can be — and we’re not stopping until full gender equality is reached.”

Organizers urged women and nonbinary people to stop all work on Tuesday, including household errands and child care. Even Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir said she would take part, telling local news media that she would not call a cabinet meeting and that she expected other women in the cabinet to strike.

Nobel Prize in Economics Awarded to Claudia Goldin for Work on the Gender Pay Gap

The Nobel Prize explains the relevance of her research:

Historically, much of the gender gap in earnings could be explained by differences in education and occupational choices. However, this year’s economic sciences laureate Claudia Goldin has shown that the bulk of this earnings difference is now between men and women in the same occupation, and that it largely arises with the birth of the first child. 

  ***

By trawling through the archives and compiling and correcting historical data, this year’s economic sciences laureate Claudia Goldin has been able to present new and often surprising facts. She has also given us a deeper understanding of the factors that affect women’s opportunities in the labour market and how much their work has been in demand. The fact that women’s choices have often been, and remain, limited by marriage and responsibility for the home and family is at the heart of her analyses and explanatory models. Goldin’s studies have also taught us that change takes time, because choices that affect entire careers are based on expectations that may later prove to be false. Her insights reach far outside the borders of the US and similar patterns have been observed in many other countries. Her research brings us a better understanding of the labour markets of yesterday, today and tomorrow.

UChicago Alum Claudia Goldin Wins Nobel Prize for Research on Gender and Labor

        Detailing Goldin's work and books.

Podcast, Claudia Goldin: Why do Women Still Make Less Than Men?, Harvard Magazine.

 

Exploring the Pay Gap in Large Law Firms and the Role of High-Profile Litigation in Facilitating Pay Equity

Rachel S. Arnow-Richman, Beyond the Glass Ceiling: Panes of Equity Partnership, Fla. Int'l U. L. Rev. (2023 Forthcoming)

This Article, prepared for a “micro-symposium” on Professor Kerri Stone’s monograph Panes of the Glass Ceiling (2022), explores the partnership pay gap in large law firms and the role of high-profile litigation in facilitating pay equity. There is a rich literature and extensive data on the gender attainment gap in elite law practice, particularly with regard to women’s attrition from practice and poor representation within the partnership ranks. Less attention has been paid to the way in which the exceptional women who achieve equity partner status continue to lag behind their male peers. This Article explores “Women v. BigLaw,” a cluster of equal pay cases brought by women partners late 2010s against elite firms. Using Stone’s work as a lens, it reveals how the same unspoken beliefs that underlie the law firm glass ceiling operate above it, placing women partners at the bottom of a new compensation hierarchy centered on origination credit. Due to historical allocations, a culture of deference toward male rainmakers, and implicitly biased attorney development and evaluation practices, origination operates as a form of “legacy credit” that locks in preexisting entitlements favoring male partners. Despite this, gender equity in law practice has been framed principally as a professional value, not a legal imperative. Women v. BigLaw and the unprecedented use of the court system by women lawyers reveals, however, that partnership pay practices pose a liability risk to firms. This new reality may incent structural change in ways that attention to gender equity as a managerial and professional goal could not.

New Study Disputes Conventional Wisdom on Gender Gap in Negotiations

Michael Conklin, Is It Really a Man's World? Using Real-Life Negotiations to Reframe the Negotiation Gender, S.L.U L. J. (forthcoming)

Abstract:

This first-of-its-kind study utilizes a dataset of over 1,000 negotiations from the television show Pawn Stars to analyze the role gender plays in negotiations. The results call into question commonly accepted beliefs about the negotiation gender gap. For example, most studies on the negotiation gender gap consist of hypothetical negotiations in which participants do not experience the real-life consequences of their negotiated outcomes. As the findings of this study attest, drawing conclusions about real-world negotiations from such hypothetical negotiations is problematic. By using a dataset of real-world negotiations, this study provides a valuable framework from which to analyze negotiations and gender bias. The far-reaching ramifications of this study call into question the use of hypotheticals in negotiation studies, proposed solutions to the gender pay gap, how people negotiate differently depending on the gender of their opponents, and negotiation advice specifically offered to women. The methodology for this study allows for further analysis into how men and women negotiate in a real-world setting, such as willingness to walk away from the negotiation, use of a counteroffer rather than accepting a first offer, use of objective language, and implementing cognitive anchoring through an extreme initial offer. Additionally, this study analyzes an aspect of gender discrimination research that is often overlooked—the possibility of counterbalancing gender biases that produce seemingly gender-neutral results. Finally, the findings of this study help rebut the notion that the gender pay gap is simply the result of men’s superior negotiation ability and proclivity to engage in the practice.

Conclusion:

The primary finding of this research—that seller gender was not a factor in negotiated outcome—elicits discussion predominantly for how counterintuitive it was. The existing literature on negotiations and gender strongly support the conclusion that, on average, women receive worse outcomes than men.***

While not always approaching statistical significance, it is a notable finding of the present research that men acted in accordance with negotiation best practices better than women in every metric measured. They were more willing to walk away from the negotiation, more likely to use objective language in their offer, more likely to counteroffer, and more likely to implement an extreme initial offer. Nevertheless, the men did not receive any better negotiated outcomes than the women.***

The gender negotiation gap is widely cited as a leading cause for the gender pay gap. But unfortunately for women, explanations for the gender pay gap likely go beyond just differences in negotiation propensity and ability. Even if female new hires did negotiate with the same frequency and techniques as men, there is evidence to suggest they would nevertheless receive disproportionately unequal outcomes. As previously discussed, women find themselves in a double bind when negotiating because female traits can be viewed as poor negotiation strategy but adopting masculine traits can result in being punished for violating gender norms. Also previously discussed, just the expectation that women are not skilled negotiators may result in more of an unwillingness to offer concessions to them during a negotiation, thus resulting in suboptimal negotiating results compared to their male counterparts.

 

New Book, Mother Tongue: The Surprising History of Women's Words

Jenni Nuttall, Mother Tongue: The Surprising History of Women's Words (Viking 2023)

An enlightening linguistic journey through a thousand years of feminist language--and what we can learn from the vivid vocabulary that English once had for women's bodies, experiences, and sexuality

So many of the words that we use to chronicle women's lives feel awkward or alien. Medical terms are scrupulously accurate but antiseptic. Slang and obscenities have shock value, yet they perpetuate taboos. Where are the plain, honest words for women's daily lives?Mother Tongue is a historical investigation of feminist language and thought, from the dawn of Old English to the present day. Dr. Jenni Nuttall guides readers through the evolution of words that we have used to describe female bodies, menstruation, women's sexuality, the consequences of male violence, childbirth, women's paid and unpaid work, and gender. Along the way, she challenges our modern language's ability to insightfully articulate women's shared experiences by examining the long-forgotten words once used in English for female sexual and reproductive organs. Nuttall also tells the story of words like womb and breast, whose meanings have changed over time, as well as how anatomical words such as hysteria and hysterical came to have such loaded legacies. Inspired by today's heated debates about words like womxn and menstruators--and by more personal conversations with her teenage daughter--Nuttall describes the profound transformations of the English language. In the process, she unearths some surprisingly progressive thinking that challenges our assumptions about the past--and, in some cases, puts our twenty-first-century society to shame. Mother Tongue is a rich, provocative book for anyone who loves language--and for feminists who want to look to the past in order to move forward.

Kirkus Book Review here. 

Gender Inequality and Representations of Women in the Contracts Curriculum

Deborah Zalesne, Gender Inequality in Contracts Casebooks: Representations of Women in the Contracts Curriculum, 17 FIU Law Rev. 139 (2023).

Gender has always explicitly or implicitly played a critical role in contracting and in contracts opinions—from the early nineteenth century, when married women lacked the legal capacity altogether to contract, through the next century, when women gained the right to contract but continued to lack bargaining power and to be disadvantaged in the bargaining process in many cases, to today, when women are present in greater numbers in business and commerce, but face continued, yet less overt, obstacles. Typical casebooks provide ample offerings for discussions of the ways in which parties can be and have been disadvantaged because of their gender and gender identity. At the core, gender inequity often stems from long-held stereotypes about women in contracting, which are often on full display in the cases. The vast majority of cases in the typical Contracts casebook are drawn primarily from the commercial context; sales, franchise, employment, and transfer of property cases predominate most Contracts casebooks, with many fewer cases in the family context. In the commercial cases, women and other people who do not identify as men, rarely seen as the businessperson, seller, or landowner, are sorely underrepresented, and the “non-male” perspective tends to be obscured. Casebook offerings involving non-male parties still tend to be clustered in certain areas—namely contract defenses, promissory estoppel, and family cases. The result is a Contracts curriculum that typically confines women to certain traditional roles and relegates women’s issues to a secondary status, privileging rational, arms-length market promises at the expense of family-based promises. The overall gender allocation in cases may or may not be reflective of the actual presence of women in the universe of American contracts cases. But either way, it raises some issues regarding how the typical casebook presents women in the realm of contracts cases, and overall, the role of women in contracting. There is, of course, a diversity of viewpoints and a multiplicity of voices among women and feminists, who are divided by age, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity, and class, among other things. There are divisions among feminists over the nature and source of gender injustice, as well as over solutions.2 Feminists differ, for example, over the roles of men and women (such as biological differences and cultural frameworks that land women as the primary caretakers most of the time), and whether and how the law should account for those differences.3 When it comes to contract law, some feminists embrace contracting as a means of empowerment,4 while others express concern over whether most women have the bargaining power necessary to protect themselves in the bargaining process. 5 The goal of the Article is not to set out in any detail the contours and fine points of feminist legal theory. Rather, the Article will simply highlight gender-based deficiencies in the ways in which women are portrayed in traditional contracts cases and casebooks, often as either victims, overly-aggressive commercial actors, or in other specific gendered roles such as bride, princess, nurturer, mother, spouse, or mistress. In doing so, the Article will highlight feminist themes and conflicts in contract law and the ways in which reliance on gender-based stereotypes can negatively affect legal analysis in Contracts cases.

Goldman Sachs to Pay $215 Million to Settle Gender Bias Suit of Hindering Women's Career Advancement and Paying Them Less Than Male Colleagues

Goldman Sachs to Pay $215M to Settle Gender Bias Suit

Goldman Sachs said on Monday that it would pay $215 million to settle a lawsuit that accused the bank of systematically discriminating against thousands of female employees. The money will be divided among about 2,800 women, and the bank agreed to change some of its practices.

The individual payout amount itself is less than it might appear: Subtracting legal fees, it comes to roughly $47,000 per plaintiff. Still, the settlement is the latest effort to make Wall Street address what critics say are years of unequal and unfair treatment of female workers.

The lawsuit accused Goldman of hindering women’s career advancement and paying them less than their male colleagues. It took particular aim at the firm’s performance review process, which they said favored men, setting them up for promotions and higher pay.