Clear enough; women are more prone in work-related humiliation than men especially in the legal profession are whereas most male attorneys have the tendency to leave sexist and crude remarks out of ego. “Women in the legal profession remain underrepresented in positions of greatest status, influence and economic reward. . . The problems are compounded by the lack of consensus that there are in fact serious problems” (Women Entering Legal Profession 109). Legal Profession as a Fraternal Profession
“Recent contributions to the literature on gender stratification suggest that sexist behaviour is most likely to occur where organizational culture specifically values characteristics traditionally attributed to men and where power is supported by instrumental and social cliques” (Rosenberg 417). The legal profession is considered to be a fraternal profession where men feel more comfortable competing with other men. Similar to the medicine profession and religious ministries, doctors and priests are more used to having exclusively male colleagues.
These three professions are established as strictly for men as they require the intelligence, critical thinking, labour, and religious canons that only men are believed to possess. The history of women’s role in the society has definitely affected their career development today. The idea of women in the same profession where men are deemed to be excelling sort of produces intimidation in the end of men. It is often asserted by scholars that “Law is necessarily the most conservative of the professions and it is not strange that people are slow in accepting such an innovation as the woman lawyer” (Prouty).
Edith Prouty asserts in her journal that the feeling of fraternity among the male members of the legal profession is similar to that feeling of doctors and ministers. The fraternal feeling encourages them to stick to codes which make it hard for them to adapt easily to change. “they form one brotherhood and there is a certain friendliness and courtesy among them that I think is not found among the members of other professions (Prouty).
Studies also reveal that women lawyers earn less than what men lawyers earn. They are also less likely to be granted partnerships on law firms than men. In addition to that, research reveals that “Some 20 percent of the female respondents identified themselves as having achieved partnership status whereas 55 percent of the male respondents were partners. The women reported average hourly earnings of $16. 30, while the men earned an average of $28. 30 per hour” (Lentz & Laband 231).
However, the female are said to be lesser in legal tenure than men as most of the female respondents have only been in the profession for 5 years at most while men have been practicing for more than 10 years. One of the causes of these lower rates is the lesser demand of clients for female attorneys. Research suggests that some of the structural constraints experienced by female attorneys are “employer bias and institutionalized patterns favoring men may operate net of individual factors in explaining gender inequality” (Beckman and Philips 679).
Source: law aspect
