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From quite long time ago women are accepted to universities. Yet to prove your point about "law being fixed long time ago" you refer to news from few months ago

From quite long time ago women are accepted to universities. Yet to prove your point about "law being fixed long time ago" you refer to news from few months ago.

rayiner 7y ago
I didn’t say law was “fixed.” (To paraphrase Justice Ginsberg, law will be “fixed” when there are nine women on the Supreme Court.) What I said was that recent progress is the result of work that started decades ago. Harvard law graduated its first women in 1953. But back then top women law graduates were still getting offers to be secretaries. (Justice Ginsberg’s story was not at all atypical for her cohort.) That, along with the prospect of joining a 90%+ male class in and of itself dissuaded women from pursing law. Law schools fixed that by making 50-50 classes an express goal, and then achieving that goal. Then law firms made 50-50 classes of incoming associates an express goal, and achieved that goal. Gender parity was achieved not simply by accepting women to law schools, but by actively seeking to admit gender balanced classes. But once that happened, the new ratio became self-perpetuating. When being a woman lawyer no longer meant being part of a tiny minority in law school, a firm, etc., women self-selected into it when previously they had opted out. I strongly suspect the same factors are in play in STEM: women who would be good programmers self-select out of the field because they don’t want to be the 1-2 women in a class of 20 men, or the 1-2 women programmers on a team of 20 men.
- metalforever 7y ago
  My experience in school was more that the men in group projects would think that you were an idiot and you couldn’t find a team.
- jimbokun 7y ago
  > (To paraphrase Justice Ginsberg, law will be “fixed” when there are nine women on the Supreme Court.) Wait, what? Is this an argument that men are inherently unsuited to be Supreme Court Justices? My guess is this means having 9 women on the Supreme Court is to make up for all the years there were 9 men on the Supreme Court. I find this dangerous logic. Seeking to alternate oppression of one group versus another doesn't seem like a good long term solution, in my opinion. By the way, thanks for your analysis about the progression of gender equality in the legal profession. That's something I didn't know about.
  - triceratops 7y ago
    > My guess is this means having 9 women on the Supreme Court is to make up for all the years there were 9 men on the Supreme Court. I took that to mean "just as it was unremarkable in the very recent past for the SC to be 100% male, it should be unremarkable if in the future it became 100% female (on merit)".
    - jimbokun 7y ago
      Well, it's doubtful it would be based completely on merit in either scenario.
  - thomasahle 7y ago
    > > (To paraphrase Justice Ginsberg, law will be “fixed” when there are nine women on the Supreme Court.) > Wait, what? Is this an argument that men are inherently unsuited to be Supreme Court Justices? It just means that if gender is not considered, we should see an all women's court once every 2^9 = 512 time. If the number never goes above the mean, gender must still be a factor.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  Interesting. I wonder if law vs CS makes much difference. I do remember in my first CS class: about 70% of the men, and all but one or two women dropped the week after pointers were introduced.
kaitai 7y ago
My engineering university only started taking women in the 1970s. My mother could not attend as they did not accept women.

From quite long time ago women are accepted to universities. Yet to prove your point about "law being fixed long time ago" you refer to news from few months ago.

rayiner 7y ago

I didn’t say law was “fixed.” (To paraphrase Justice Ginsberg, law will be “fixed” when there are nine women on the Supreme Court.) What I said was that recent progress is the result of work that started decades ago. Harvard law graduated its first women in 1953. But back then top women law graduates were still getting offers to be secretaries. (Justice Ginsberg’s story was not at all atypical for her cohort.) That, along with the prospect of joining a 90%+ male class in and of itself dissuaded women from pursing law. Law schools fixed that by making 50-50 classes an express goal, and then achieving that goal. Then law firms made 50-50 classes of incoming associates an express goal, and achieved that goal. Gender parity was achieved not simply by accepting women to law schools, but by actively seeking to admit gender balanced classes. But once that happened, the new ratio became self-perpetuating. When being a woman lawyer no longer meant being part of a tiny minority in law school, a firm, etc., women self-selected into it when previously they had opted out. I strongly suspect the same factors are in play in STEM: women who would be good programmers self-select out of the field because they don’t want to be the 1-2 women in a class of 20 men, or the 1-2 women programmers on a team of 20 men.

metalforever 7y ago
My experience in school was more that the men in group projects would think that you were an idiot and you couldn’t find a team.
jimbokun 7y ago
> (To paraphrase Justice Ginsberg, law will be “fixed” when there are nine women on the Supreme Court.) Wait, what? Is this an argument that men are inherently unsuited to be Supreme Court Justices? My guess is this means having 9 women on the Supreme Court is to make up for all the years there were 9 men on the Supreme Court. I find this dangerous logic. Seeking to alternate oppression of one group versus another doesn't seem like a good long term solution, in my opinion. By the way, thanks for your analysis about the progression of gender equality in the legal profession. That's something I didn't know about.
- triceratops 7y ago
  > My guess is this means having 9 women on the Supreme Court is to make up for all the years there were 9 men on the Supreme Court. I took that to mean "just as it was unremarkable in the very recent past for the SC to be 100% male, it should be unremarkable if in the future it became 100% female (on merit)".
  - jimbokun 7y ago
    Well, it's doubtful it would be based completely on merit in either scenario.
- thomasahle 7y ago
  > > (To paraphrase Justice Ginsberg, law will be “fixed” when there are nine women on the Supreme Court.) > Wait, what? Is this an argument that men are inherently unsuited to be Supreme Court Justices? It just means that if gender is not considered, we should see an all women's court once every 2^9 = 512 time. If the number never goes above the mean, gender must still be a factor.
mixmastamyk 7y ago
Interesting. I wonder if law vs CS makes much difference. I do remember in my first CS class: about 70% of the men, and all but one or two women dropped the week after pointers were introduced.

kaitai 7y ago

My engineering university only started taking women in the 1970s. My mother could not attend as they did not accept women.