Blog 33

More and more women are gaining high-powered positions in law firms. They are sometimes discouraged because they work really hard and do not always get the positions they are working towards. Some of the challenges they face are how to be authoritative and how to get your point across without seeming like a not so nice person. Some women realize that if they are too nice, they will be taken advantage of or walked all over. But other women also realize that being bitchy is not the best way to handle every situation, people begin to avoid you and do not want to be around you. Also the fact that a lot of male lawyers only want to train and mentor other males, they are often the ones that get the bigger cases. There is a discomfort when men and women have to travel together. They are afraid that there will be rumors about them sleeping together, so they sometimes try to take cases that are not cases that they will have to travel for. A few women in decided to start their own law firm that will be a women only law firm. They said that it had been a challenge, but they are finally beginning to take off. They are hiring new associates and they are all female and the partners are all female as well.

Blog 32

High-powered women lawyers are viewed as suspect parents because of all the time it takes in order for them to get into that position, it is time that was not spent with their kids. Parenthood is viewed differently for men, they are almost expected to not be at home, but be a work. They are viewed as the breadwinners, so if they are not at home at night with their families, it is alright. But if a woman works as many hours as a man does and has children, some parents look at her like she is not a good mother. Women have to get clever in how they manage their time at work and at home so that they will be able to have plenty of time to spend with their children. One woman says that she was looked down upon because she had a person that ran errands for her and cooked and cleaned. She defended her decision by saying that she does not have a lot of free time period, and she wants to be able to spend that time doing the things she enjoys doing, like being a mom and being with her children, rather than running around doing errands.

Blog 31

There are many problems with work and family balance in the legal profession. For example, when a woman gets engaged, people are automatically wondering when she will be leaving because she has a baby. It is extremely difficult for women to have children, leave the workforce for a period of time and then re-enter and continue working the same hours that she worked before she had a family. Some ways that legal firms have tried to deal with balancing work and family is by allowing flexible work schedules. Some may want to work from home one day a week, or leave the office by 5:00 pm at the end of the work day. This becomes problematic because the lawyers that are working like “real” lawyers get upset and view the lawyers that have flexible schedules as “not real” lawyers. The individuals, who work flexible schedules, begin to feel guilty and end up taking on more of the workload and get right back to where they were before, working 80 hour weeks. They also realize that there is no room for advancement, they are not going to make partner not working like a “real” lawyer. They also begin to feel resented by others at work; people no longer want to work with them because they think they are just slacking off at home instead of actually working and helping them out. They get ridiculed a lot and people make jokes about how they are not really available at home when they say they are or that they do not take their job seriously.

Blog 25

With sexual harassment laws, came positive change and negative change in the workplace. Women are able to say “no” without the fear of repercussions. The overt sexual harassment has decreased, but “underground harassment,” has developed. Underground harassment is “leers, off-color jokes, and pornographic e-mails.” There is also “story making” where people join into the rumor mill if a man partner is working too often with a female associate, there is an assumption that they must be sleeping together. This has caused men and women to retreat into same-sex groups and networks to avoid the rumors. English says that, “Many people view sexualized behavior aimed toward workplace success pragmatically, a “weapon in the arsenal” that a woman can deploy to gain an edge” (43). A male lawyer says that he does not think there is anything wrong with women using the sexuality in the workplace, as long as it is used properly. English also says that the negative effect of using sexuality in the workplace is that “it de-legitimizes a woman by reawakening the stereotype that a woman’s mere presence is overwhelmingly sexual rather than professional” (44).

Blog 23

From the 1960s to the 1980s, men wore identical suits to court and women tried to look like men. They wore boxy black or navy suits, skirt suits, and had their hair pulled back into a bun while in court. According to English, “Over time women decided they didn’t like the required masculine look, whereupon they “rebelled and “demanded” a return to a more traditionally feminine look” (19). One woman changed her appearance only after hearing a jury mocking what she was wearing, so she began dressing in more fashionable clothes to increase her credibility. Another woman received a make-over that boosted her confidence enough that she was able to make partner. Michelle Obama dresses unlike most of the other first ladies. She talks about all of the things she wants to do in the White House and dresses like many American women. She says that she buys clothes from J. Crew, but admits that for occasions when she has to dress up, that she wears designer dresses and accessories. In English’s book, one woman says that she wears lipstick in order to look older and more authoritative during board meetings. She often gets misjudged because she is young and a woman. She dresses up and puts on make-up as an “armor.” Women were rewarded for looking more feminine with greater power and control, they were not just dismissed. Many men believe that women have an easier time with dress as lawyers than men do because of how great the range in choices for clothing is for women and not for men. For men, they are either formal, in suits, or casual, in khakis and a polo shirt.

Blog 22

Sonia Sotomayor was going to be the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice and the third female Justice. Race and gender played a role in her qualifications as a Justice. She believes that judges out to look at the impact of their rulings on individual businesses and government. She also believes that her gender and race are assets to her being a judge. People that disagreed with her being sworn in as a Justice was because of comments that that she said that made her seem like a liberal activist and that her own personal and political agenda is more important than the law as written. People were concerned because she had shown a personal bias based on ethnicity and gender. Republicans wanted to make sure that before she was sworn in that she understood that the role of jurist in our country is to apply the law even-handedly, despite their own feelings or personal or political preferences. She has had a reputation of frequently arguing in favor of minority plaintiffs and points of view. In Ricci v. DeStefano, Sotomayor served as a 3-judge panel that declined to address the Constitutional issues of this case. White firefighters were sewing for reverse discrimination because when not enough minorities scored well enough on a promotional test, the test results were thrown out. Six of her decisions went to appeal, five of those six were reversed and the sixth decision, the court disagreed with her reasoning but kept the ruling.

blog 17

Building relationships with inmates present dangers for prison officers in several ways. One officer said that when inmates are put in prison it is because of poor decisions they made on the outside. When inmates form relationships with other inmates, their individual poor decisions come together to form one big issue for officers. One woman in the film said that she would form relationships with officers and then use their relationship to get money and other things out of them. The warden of the North Carolina women’s prison said that it was dangerous for officers and inmates to form relationships because the officers could potentially bring in dangerous contraband and drugs into the prison. All of these things make it more difficult to maintain order in a prison. Women inmates sometimes felt like they could manipulate male officers with tears or excuses. They felt they could get away with more with male officers than with female officers. The major assumption officers had of women inmates is that their issues with one another and the system were petty compared to issues that male inmates had. They often started fights or had altercations over small things. They argued with the officers over everything. The officers said that they felt like they were always being questioned or second-guessed whenever they told the women inmates to do something. Officers made a distinction between older inmates that “do their own time” and younger, less experienced violent inmates. Since African Americans and Latinos are the overwhelming majority of inmates, the officers faced unique challenges that white officers did not face. These officers are sensitized by their everyday interaction with racism. Most officers viewed inmates as humans that had made mistakes while out in society. The officers also revealed that they sometimes felt like baby sitters when taking care of the inmates.