Gender and the Law Blog

Arnow-Richman on "Beyond the Glass Ceiling: Panes of Equity Partnership"

Rachel Arnow-Richman has published Beyond the Glass Ceiling: Panes of Equity Partnership in Volume 17 of the Florida International University Law Reivew. The abstract is below: 

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 in the 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 Book Justice Jackson's Autobiography

Kimberly Robinson, Book Review, Justice Jackson had "Wrenching Time" as Big Law Working Mom, reviewing Lovely One by Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson described her return to law firm life after the birth of her first daughter as “wrenching,” saying she “drastically underestimated the challenges of new motherhood.”

“I can honestly say that going back into the office as a new mother, and returning to the cadence and pressures of Big Law, was the stuff of nightmares,” Jackson said in her memoir, “Lovely One,” which was released Tuesday.

She describes the challenges of commuting, breastfeeding, and having to slip out of the office apologetically “at the unspeakably early hour of five P.M. each workday.” And in particular, she details the isolation and lack of motivation she felt of returning to Goodwin Procter after four months of maternity leave.

For “me, there was a hollowness to the corporate law enterprise,” Jackson wrote.

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.

Legislating Flexibility in the Post-Pandemic Workplace

Madeleine Gyory, "Legislating Flexibility in the Post-pandemic Workplace, Villanova L. Rev. (forthcoming)  

Working parents and caregivers in the United States struggle to balance the dual demands of work and care. Many working caregivers need flexible work arrangements (“FWAs”)—changes to their hours, schedule, or location—to allow them to balance work and care. But access to flexibility remains out of reach for many workers and is least accessible to the most marginalized. The COVID-19 pandemic underscored this problem, as huge numbers of women dropped out of the workforce to care for family. While no federal or state law requires employers to grant FWAs to caregivers, several states and localities have passed “right to request” laws, which establish steps employers must follow when workers ask for flexibility. Several cities go further to provide caregivers with limited rights to FWAs. One city, San Francisco, responded to the pandemic by granting caregivers robust legal rights to flexible work arrangements.

This Article offers the first analysis of FWA laws since the start of the pandemic and since passage of the nation’s strongest FWA law in San Francisco. The Article uses three case studies to interrogate how FWA statutes across the country protect or fail working caregivers and exposes gaps in protection. Using San Francisco’s law as a model, the Article argues that other states and cities should respond to the crisis of care exposed by the pandemic by passing comprehensive flexible workplace laws. The Article offers a roadmap for legislative action, recommending that future FWA laws should go beyond the right to request and grant broad substantive protections that cover a diverse array of workers. Building on prior scholarship advocating for accommodation of caregivers in the workplace, the Article argues that legislative intervention is needed to ensure access to flexibility irrespective of income, education, race, or gender.

Prashasti Bhatnagar on "The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act Leaves Agricultural Workers Behind"

Prashasti Bhatnagar has published The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act Leaves Agricultural Workers Behind in volume 52 of the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics. The conclusion is excerpted here: 

Employment conditions contribute to workers’ ability to be healthy, particularly for immigrant pregnant workers. This article highlights how laws like PWFA often do not protect pregnant immigrant workers in the agricultural industry, resulting in health inequities. Advocacy efforts by immigrant workers and grassroots organizations have resulted in some protections, but there are still gaps. Therefore, future efforts geared towards eliminating pregnancy discrimination and the resulting health inequities must center the lived experiences of immigrant workers and understand workplace pregnancy discrimination as an immigrant justice issue. In order to achieve health justice, governments should engage with workers and grassroots organizations to build community power and create systems that invest in joy, well-being, safety, and liberation. 

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.

Maybell Romero on "Shamed"

Maybell Romero has posted a draft work-in-progress on SSRN titled "Shamed." The abstract previews: 

Victims of rape, sexual assault, and sexual abuse have long had to contend with victim blaming and victim shaming. While legal scholars have had fruitful and theoretically engaging debates regarding the validity and merits of using shaming sanctions and shaming criminal defendants, there has been precious little written about the shame that victims face, let alone a recognition that their interaction with shame as both a social force and emotion is multidimensional. In a previous piece titled “Ruined”, I examined the language judges use during sentencing hearings in sexual assault cases to describe victims, such as pronouncing them “broken,” “ruined,” or “destroyed.” This Article serves as a continuation of the inquiry I started in “Ruined” by expanding in focus. It seeks to differentiate between the related concepts of shame and stigma and explain why shaming of rape victims is so common. I propose a novel typology with which to examine a rape victim’s experience and separate the shame that victims are made to feel by the criminal adjudicative process, the shame victims are supposed to perform, and the shame victims are supposed to feel into discrete components to consider, revealing that shame in relation to such victims is multilayered and much more complex than legal scholarship has made it out to be.

I share my own experiences with each of these manifestations of shame to demonstrate the usefulness of my new typology, but I also relate how I have felt ashamed to come forward with my story as a practicing attorney as well as my experiences of being shamed in the legal academy. I conclude, however, with a note of optimism, reflecting on the positive things to have come with my very public self-disclosure of being a rape and sexual abuse victim and hoping to encourage others to employ personal narrative and autoethnographic methods in their own scholarship, as well.

Reform of Sexual Harassment Laws in Australia

Belinda Smith, Respect@Work Amendments: A Positive Reframing of Australia’s Sexual Harassment Laws,  
(2023) 36 Australian Journal of Labour Law 145

Australian law on sexual harassment has seen many changes in the past few years. This article outlines and analyses these changes in light of the findings of the inquiry that recommended them, Respect@Work: National Inquiry into Sexual Harassment in Australian Workplaces. The Report found that sexual harassment was pervasive, harmful and clearly not being addressed by the existing laws, which relied almost entirely on individual victims to lodge formal complaints and bear the burden of driving change. The legislative amendments serve to harmonise and improve individual protections across the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth), Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) and work health and safety laws. The most significant change, though, is the introduction of a new duty on persons conducting a business or undertaking to take positive steps to prevent harassment and sex discrimination. While its deficiencies are acknowledged, this duty could play an important functional and symbolic role in shifting regulatory attention from victims to their employers and other duty holders, and more importantly, from redressing harm after the fact to preventing it in the first place.

Rachel Arnow-Richman on "Beyond the Glass Ceiling: Panes of Equity Partnership"

Rachel Arnow-Richman has posted Beyond the Glass Ceiling: Panes of Equity Partnership on SSRN. This article is forthcoming in the Florida International University Law Review. The abstract is excerpted here:

This Article . . . 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 . . . against elite firms. [I]t 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.

Aya Gruber Publishes "A Tale of Two Me Toos"

Aya Gruber has published A Tale of Two Me Toos in volume 2023 of the Illinois Law Review. The abstract is excerpted here: 

What is #MeToo’s legacy? The conventional account currently being indelibly forged into our collective memory is that #MeToo was an unconditional progressive victory. It was a reckoning of the disempowered against the powerful that profoundly challenged sexist culture. This Article complicates and even counters that narrative by shining a light on #MeToo’s dark side, namely, its carceral and neoliberal messages and policy reforms. Although today’s George-Floyd-mindful feminists often describe #MeToo as having nothing to do with criminal law, the reality is that the movement featured familiar tough-on-crime discourses, passionately called for more criminal law and prosecutorial power, and, in fact, produced several new carceral laws and policies. Yet, just hours after famous actor Alyssa Milano sent the tweet heard around the world, Black Twitter revealed that Me Too already existed: Tarana Burke’s “me too movement.” This Me Too centered on survivors’ material and emotional needs, focused on young women of color living in socioeconomic precarity, and embraced noncriminal “transformative justice.” Milano’s #MeToo, by contrast, incorporated popular narratives of criminality, bolstered the legitimacy of the penal state, and relied on traditional notions of sex and gender. And it was Milano’s that became the Me Too. This Article contrasts the two Me Toos to critique the individualistic and punitive #MeToo movement that is and mourn the intersectional and restorative Me Too movement that could have been. #MeToo’s emphasis on sensational stories and social media derived evidence of “epidemics” effectively cut off debate, enabling carceral reforms to pass at a dizzying pace. This Article is the first to catalogue, describe, and examine the actual criminal laws and policies erected in #MeToo’s name. Even a surface analysis of these reforms reveals that, contrary to advocates’ claims, they do not just close “loopholes.” Instead, each new or broadened criminal law raises troubling issues of civil liberties, defendants’ rights, and state power, and each portends to sweep in people—including women—who bear little resemblance to the unrepentant monstrous offenders featured in #MeToo discourse.

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.

 

Widiss on "The Federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act: Essential Support, Especially in Post-Dobbs America"

Deborah A. Widiss has published The Federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act: Essential Support, Especially in Post-Dobbs America on SSRN. The article is forthcoming in the Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal in 2023. The abstract is excerpted here: 

The federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, enacted in December 2022, is landmark legislation that will help ensure workers can stay healthy through a pregnancy. It responds to the reality that pregnant workers may need changes at work, such as permission to sit on a stool, carry a water bottle, relief from heavy lifting, or reduced exposure to potentially dangerous chemicals. Workers may also need schedule modifications or leave for prenatal appointments, childbirth, or post-partum recovery, or accommodations to address medical conditions related to pregnancy or childbirth.

Previously, federal sex discrimination law and federal disability law sometimes required employers to provide such accommodations, but many pregnancy-related needs fell between the cracks. Both employees and employers were confused about how the requirements of those laws interacted. PWFA, passed with strong bipartisan support, provides a clear standard modeled on disability law: employers must provide reasonable accommodations for pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions, unless doing so would be an undue hardship.

This Article analyzes the new federal statute’s substantive provisions in detail, as well as key legislative history, models for the statutory language, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s proposed regulations. It explains the basic reasonable accommodation requirement, other substantive requirements, the likely scope of “related medical conditions,” and the remedies that will be available if violations occur. The Article also highlights how new restrictions on abortion access make PWFA even more essential. In states that have sharply curtailed abortion rights, more women are carrying pregnancies, including high-risk pregnancies, to term. PWFA is not a substitute for the autonomy to make decisions regarding reproductive health, but it can help keep pregnant workers healthy and assure they are treated with dignity and fairness.

Women's Weak Language is a Source of Strength

Adam Grant, Op Ed, NYT, Women Know Exactly What They're Doing When They Use "Weak Language."

“Stop using weak language.” If you’re a woman, you’ve probably gotten this advice from a mentor, a coach or a teacher. If you want to be heard, use more forceful language. If you want a raise or a promotion, demand it. As the saying goes, nice girls don’t get the corner office.

This advice may be well intentioned, but it’s misguided. Disclaimers (I might be wrong, but …), hedges (maybe, sort of), and tag questions (don’t you think?) can be a strategic advantage. So-called weak language is an unappreciated source of strength. Understanding why can explain a lot about the way women acquire power and influence — and how men do, too.

It turns out that women who use weak language when they ask for raises are more likely to get them. In one experiment, experienced managers watched videos of people negotiating for higher pay and weighed in on whether the request should be granted. The participants were more willing to support a salary bump for women — and said they would be more eager to work with them — if the request sounded tentative: “I don’t know how typical it is for people at my level to negotiate,” they said, following a script, “but I’m hopeful you’ll see my skill at negotiating as something important that I bring to the job.” By using a disclaimer (“I don’t know …”) and a hedge “(I hope …”), the women reinforced the supervisor’s authority and avoided the impression of arrogance. For the men who asked for a raise, however, weak language neither helped nor hurt. No one was fazed if they just came out and demanded more money.

In 29 studies, women in a variety of situations had a tendency to use more “tentative language” than men. But that language doesn’t reflect a lack of assertiveness or conviction. Rather, it’s a way to convey interpersonal sensitivity — interest in other people’s perspectives — and that’s why it’s powerful.***

New evidence reveals that it’s not ambition per se that women are being penalized for. In fact, women who are perceived as intelligent and capable, determined and achievement-oriented, independent and self-reliant are seen as more promotable to leadership positions.

The problem arises if people perceive them to be forceful, controlling, commanding and outspoken. These are qualities for which men are regularly given a pass, but they put women at risk of being disliked and denied for leadership roles

Sexual Harassment Reconceived as Misappropriation and Waste of Corporate Human and Financial Assets

Jennifer Ann Drobac, The Misappropriation, Embezzlement, Theft, and Waste of Corporate Human and Financial Assets: Sexual Harassment Reconceived, 36 ABA J. LAB. & EMP. L. 425-477 (2022).

This article suggests how sexual harassment should be treated by companies as a civil misappropriation, embezzlement, conversion, or theft—as well as a civil rights violation. Additionally, some payment associated with sex-based harassment should be considered corporate waste. The misappropriation approach considers not only how sex-based harassment constitutes a civil misappropriation, embezzlement, conversion, or theft, but it also responds to three anticipated objections to sexual harassment as a civil misappropriation: (1) sexual harassment is a minor corporate expense; (2) identification of sexual harassment as civil misappropriation of corporate human assets commodifies targets; and (3) this new concept will change neither corporate responses nor corporate cultures. First, in response, sexual harassment is not a minor expense but one that costs companies billions of dollars annually. It is, therefore, in a company’s financial interest to treat the problem as a theft of valuable assets. Second, only corporate failure to recognize the market value of female professional talent dehumanizes people. Almost all human beings engage in work, and men, in particular, are valued for their work. Thus, the misappropriation solution puts targets on the same plane as privileged men, valued for their market productivity (as opposed to sexual or reproductive utility). Third, the identification of sexual harassment as a theft, conversion, embezzlement, or misappropriation, as well as a civil rights violation, encourages companies to modify and improve their remedial responses, corporate culture, profitability, and transparency. By making corporations and harassment targets as potential allies, instead of adversaries, the reconception of sex-based harassment as a misappropriation of corporate human assets incentivizes new collaborations for social and economic justice.

Study Analyzes Why the Gender Pay Gap Has Stalled

Peter Blair and Benjamin Posmanick have published a working paper titled Why Did Gender Wage Convergence in the United States Stall with the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Global Working Group. The abstract provides: 

During the 1980s, the wage gap between white women and white men in the US declined by approximately 1 percentage point per year. In the decades since, the rate of gender wage convergence has stalled to less than one-third of its previous value. An outstanding puzzle in economics is “why did gender wage convergence in the US stall?” Using an event study design that exploits the timing of state and federal family-leave policies, we show that the introduction of the policies can explain 94% of the reduction in the rate of gender wage convergence that is unaccounted for after controlling for changes in observable characteristics of workers. If gender wage convergence had continued at the pre-family leave rate, wage parity between white women and white men would have been achieved as early as 2017.

The article concludes: 

[U]sing the introduction of family-leave policies, we explain 94% of the stagnation in gender wage convergence that is unaccounted for after controlling for changes in observable characteristics between men and women. A key lesson from our work is that legally-mandated labor market flexibility can have the unintended effect of stymieing gender wage convergence, notwithstanding the increasing evidence that flexibility which arises endogenously in the labor market through technological innovation, or from firms changing their own policies, can lead to reduced gender wage gaps * * * .

 

The evidence that we provide on the impact of leave policies on gender wage convergence in the US contributes to a growing literature documenting negative impacts of leave policies on gender wage equality in Europe and other OECD countries * * *. Because the leave offered in the US is less generous that what is offered in peer countries, our results suggests an important role for economists to consider what features of family-leave policy design can soften the equity-efficiency trade-off arising from the introduction of family-leave policies. We leave this work to future studies by other scholars having answered the question: “why did gender wage convergence in the United States stall?”

Missouri House Republications Adopted Stricter Dress Code for Women, Arms Must be Concealed

Missouri House Republicans Adopted Stricter Dress Code -- Just for Women

The Republican-controlled Missouri House of Representatives used its session’s opening day Wednesday to tighten the dress code for female legislators, while leaving the men’s dress code alone.

The changes were spearheaded by state Rep. Ann Kelley (R), a co-sponsor who was among the Republicans seeking to require women to wear a blazer when in the chamber. She was met by swift opposition from Democrats who called it “ridiculous.”

The state House eventually approved a modified version of Kelley’s proposal, which allows for cardigans as well as jackets, but still requires women’s arms to be concealed. Missouri Democrats tore into Republicans for pushing the new restrictions on what women in the chamber could wear. ***

 

While previous rules said that “dresses or skirts or slacks worn with a blazer or sweater and appropriate dress shoes or boots” were allowed to be worn by female lawmakers, Kelley, one of the co-sponsors of H.R. 11, said Wednesday that women needed to wear jackets on the floor as “it is essential to always maintain a formal and professional atmosphere.”

Senate Passes Protections for Pregnant Workers and New Mothers

Senate Passes Protections for Pregnant Workers and New Mothers

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act passed the Senate with bipartisan support on Thursday as amendments to the omnibus spending package.

Why it matters: It's a major milestone for women's workplace civil rights. Advocates have pushed for protections for pregnant workers for over a decade, arguing that thousands of women lose their jobs each year — either fired or placed on unpaid leave — because employers are under no obligation to offer pregnant workers reasonable accommodations.

• Those would include things like extra bathroom breaks, the ability to sit while working a cash register or restrictions on how much weight they can lift.

Patrice Ruane Publishes Article on Women's Employment from the Great Depression to the Great Recesssion

Patrice Ruane has published From Pin Workers to Essential Workers: Lessons About Women's Employment and the Covid-19 Pandemic from the Great Depression and the Great Recession in volume 29 of the UCLA Journal of Gender and the Law. The abstract is here: 

This Article argues that inaccurate ideas about women and work during economic downturns, including misconceptions about which women work and how they work, lead to inadequate policy responses and ultimately hurt working women. New Deal-era federal women’s aid programs, designed around an artificial picture of the average working woman, did not provide the same robust level of jobs support that men’s programs provided. Similarly, the major federal stimulus package during the Great Recession invested in male-majority industries but failed to invest in industries dependent upon women’s labor, in part because of the misconception that working women were already “winning” the jobs race. Framing the average working woman during the pandemic recession as a remote worker in a two-income household has the potential to steer federal policy away from avenues that would help the majority of women workers who are not remote workers in two-income households. Recovery efforts during the Great Depression and the Great Recession were gender-informed and effective, but biased toward men. These recovery efforts were concentrated in male-majority industries and consequently led to men’s employment recovering long before women’s employment did. Because pandemic-related job losses have been so unevenly borne by women, gender-informed recovery policies are not only justifiable, but necessary to achieve equitable recovery.

 

This Article also questions the speculation, articulated in an influential paper by a group of economists, that the COVID-19 pandemic will accelerate changing social norms and lead to greater gender parity by increasing the number of people who are accustomed to working remotely and driving men to take on additional childcare responsibilities. The conditions following the Great Depression and the Great Recession were more conducive to changing gender norms and expectations because both events disrupted traditional male-breadwinner models of the family and resulted in large numbers of families in which the woman was employed and the man unemployed. But neither resulted in lasting improvements in gender equity in the home or at work. Both events were followed by a reactionary impulse to return to a traditionally gendered view of the organization of labor. The pandemic recession does not present the opportunity to disrupt gender norms by creating more households headed by women breadwinners, yet the risk of a conservative reversion to more traditionally gendered norms is still present.

 

Gendered and Racialized Emotional Labor in Public Organizations

Cynthia Barboza-Wilkes, REPRODUCING INEQUITY IN ORGANIZATIONS: GENDERED AND RACIALIZED EMOTIONAL LABOR IN PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS, PhD Thesis (USC School of Public Policy) 

Emotional labor research in public administration lags behind other fields, is often omitted from discussions of representative bureaucracy, and rarely looks at its gendered and racialized dimensions. The existing scholarship fails to consider the dynamic nature of emotions and that different emotions (e.g., happiness versus anger) might warrant different emotional labor techniques for different groups. Meanwhile, scholars from sociology, applied psychology, and organizational behavior widely recognize the importance of emotional labor, but few have used an intersectional lens to study the well-recognized phenomenon.

This dissertation uses an intersectional approach to codify the difficult-to-measure and often unobserved emotional labor that can institutionalize inequity within public organizations. An intersectional approach is essential to make visible the experiences of those at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities, and this dissertation describes in detail how the antecedents, experiences, and consequences of emotional labor differ based on the employee’s combination of gender and racial identity. Using a mixed-methods research design that combines daily diary entries and semi-structured interviews, this work (1) describes and measures the emotional labor embedded in both service encounters with the public and internal interactions among colleagues, (2) looks at subgroup differences in the emotional effort at the intersection of race and gender, and (3) assesses the relationship between emotional labor and burnout to inform our understanding of the well-being of a diverse public sector workforce.

I find meaningful differences within and between individuals in the emotions needed to effectively engage the public and navigate public institutions. The results reveal that, compared to their peers, women of color engage in more taxing forms of emotional labor, feel more emotionally constrained by organizational rules, are more cognizant of managing gendered and racialized stereotypes, and are more sensitive to whether the climate allows for authentic expression. I also show that public employees experienced heightened burnout during the pandemic, and the suppression of emotion contributed to that burnout, but in different ways for different groups. In particular, women of color who suppressed negative emotions were more likely to experience a reduced sense of personal accomplishment, increased cynicism, disengagement from their work, and more emotional exhaustion.

This project reveals important distinctions in the type of emotional labor demanded of public employees and how those emotional demands differ across gender and racial identities. The results make visible the experiences of those at the margins of multiple lived experiences of oppression, allowing women of color to articulate their own emotional experiences in ways that center their voices. Importantly, this work highlights the importance of factoring emotional labor into the experience of burnout at work while emphasizing that the relationship between the two varies for individuals of different backgrounds. I provide concrete proof that there is an uneven distribution of emotional labor in public organizations, and it falls predominantly on women of color.

Measuring a construct as complex and dynamic as emotional labor lays the groundwork for important reform. By codifying, measuring, and describing the differential emotional burdens embedded in public organizations, I quantitatively demonstrate the need for equitable human resource management practices that address how organizations structurally reinforce inequity.

Gender Disparities in Law Firm Partner Pay

The ABA Journal reports on ongoing disparities in law firm partner pay with some movement toward lessening the gap.  

The average male law firm partner earns 34% more than the average female partner, which is less of a differential than in prior years, according to a survey by recruiting firm Major, Lindsey & Africa in association with Law360.

Average compensation for male partners in midsize and large law firms is $1,212,000 for male partners and $905,000 for female partners, according to the 2022 Partner Compensation Survey. A summary and a link to download the survey is here.

The pay differential was 53% in 2018 and 44% in 2020.

Average partner compensation overall was $1,119,000, up 15% from 2020. Median compensation was $675,000.