Blog 39

Throughout the course of this past semester we have studied quite a bit in regards to the trials, tribulations, and difficulties that woman have had to overcome while breaking into the workforce over the past 20 to 50 years. Now granted over this time period women were very instrumental in many different career fields, however, breaking into the justice field has been a lot more difficult for them. We have see many case studies of women wanting to become involved however, not doing so as they feel it was too tough of a career for them. There are also many other opinions that have been given as well for them not getting involved with this career field. Now when going through the recent course material I can recall many different items of why the number of women that are involved in our justice system seems to be so low; first off women becoming lawyers is something that takes a very special women to do. You must have thick skin, and decent head on your shoulders and willing to take quite a bit of criticism it seems from male colleagues. Even though there are laws out there on the books that will protect us from job discrimination based on gender and harassment, it’s a lot more difficult for a women to actually report a colleague that this is occurring to them. We have heard many stories throughout the course of the semester regarding the difficulties that women have had to deal with while working in the justice field. With the recent publication by Holly English she has really been able to shed some light of the difficulties that women who become lawyers may have. Between the balancing of the long hours due to being a lawyer, to the time of trying to actually balance a home life and kids. We have to make sure that women are able to handle all things at hand. Her proposal to given women and men the equal right and change while practicing law is what would be best. Even though women may take on more responsibility in the home, they still are plenty capable of having a rewarding career as an attorney.
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Blog 38

With everything that our country deals with there are always though how help break things out of the normal cycle that they are in. It seems that our country gets into a certain path that allows for us to get very comfortable within that certain area, which in turn becomes primary and then to break out of the cycle becomes a huge event that can take a numerous about of years to overcome. A personal story that comes to my mind is with the state of Arizona. The internal justice commission that governs most of the states internal audits was always ran by men. I am fortunate enough to say that my grandmother was the first woman to ever run that department prior to her retirement in 1998. Being able to say that someone within my family was able to break barriers like that is nothing short of amazing! Another very remarkable woman in my opinion is the Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. She was the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court Justice and has a lot of ground breaking under her belt as well. I think something that is really cool as well is for the residents of Arizona. Prior to her election into the Supreme Court she was one to sit on the bench here in Arizona. That’s very special recognition for our state as well. Other women that has made quite a bit of ground for our court system is Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg. She is the second women to sit on the bench following the election of Sandra Day O’Connor. She herself has made quite a bit of headway as well within our justice system as well. A majority of her career was centered on the advocacy of equal citizenship status for both men and women. She is a strong believer in equal rights, and used that philosophy quite a bit when making rulings on her cases. Both of these women I feel are individuals that have helped pave the way for future women to enter into the justice system. Like I said earlier, in everything that occurs when something is outside the norm it takes someone to break that norm to start a change, these two women in my opinion have done just that.

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Blog 37

The American Bar Association released a report regarding the difficulties women are having with becoming fully integrated within our justice system. There was documentation within this large publication that goes into great detail regarding the changes that are occurring within the profession, however, large concerns given the fact that some sort of other action needs to be taken instead of just waiting for time to try and take over this sort of thing. In 1988 the American Bar Association released its landmark report detailing the difficulties that women are having within the justice profession. They at that time were trying to determine what exactly needed to occur to have this profession become more equal in regards to the gender that was sitting in these positions. They wanted to find out mainly what the issue was. When reviewing what one of the main reasons that this sort of thing was occurring it was mainly contributed to the attitudes that were given by already practicing male attorneys. The older more tenured attorneys had this hostile attitude towards women coming into practice law. They were mixed opinions as to why, however, what it really comes down to was the fact that many male attorneys felt they were not strong enough to engage in this sort of employment position. Now given this information the report still showed in increase in women obtaining and achieving jobs in this profession. Statistical analysis shows that from 1988 to 2003 the increase in women going to law school had gone from 22% up to 47% on average. Another interesting fact were women who became general counsel for fourteen 500 companies went from 5.9 to 23.1% either way both of those facts are outstanding improvements to a getting to a more gender equal position. Holly English as well touched on many of these points. The fact that women deal with a lot of discrimination within these sorts of positions really give them a bad taste in their mouth not keeping them around very long in the private practice side of things as a lot more women tend to sit on general counsel boards for large companies.

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Blog 36

As we have gone through many changes in our country over the past few years. One thing is definitely prevalent of occurring. We prior to this past election have never seen a women run in some sort of faction of the position highest in politics in our Country. Last year’s election during the democratic primaries you had Hilary Clinton running for the seat of president against Barak Obama. This was quite a race either way as you essentially had an African American and a Women running for seat that was normally battled for between two white men. Now on the other hand you also had a female (Sarah Palin) running with John McCain as the vice president nominee. Either way both of these were very interesting cases as there had never been any sort of women running for these elected positions to begin with. Now that we have had two women run for the highest position in our political system what is so different? You would think by this occurring it opens up things to allow for women to run at any stage or work at any level in our country correct? Now granted – when looking at other extremely high positions in Corporate America you have many that do not make it all the way to the top. The analogy used for this sort of situation is called the “glass ceiling.” Many women feel that they are only able to make it to a certain level and then that they cannot go any further. Why is that? Well many factors come into play. One of the biggest reasons that I hear about is that women feel the need to still be evolved with their family a little bit more. When hitting those very high level executive positions you usually are taken away from your family quite a bit. However, I remember doing a research paper a few years back about women in Corporate America who in turn they usually do not hold high level positions until their children are grown up and out of the home. This in my opinion makes sense as they would have nothing to do after their children are grown and out of the home as women are by nature nurtures.
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Blog 35

Recently a new set of recommendations were sent out by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regarding “best practices” that companies should follow when it comes to care taking. In the article Care taking is described as someone who has the responsibility of take care of either a child or an aging parent/grandparent. In the article they focus on the constraints that occur for individuals that need to take care of another person. With trying to balance work along with family it can become quite difficult. Now that the overall working population consists of 46% of women something like this needed to be published for individuals and businesses to refer to. When thinking about this sort of thing, it definitely needs to be considered what kinds of individuals are affected. As we move more and more down the road of our current recession, the article points out a great point in my opinion. Women more and more are becoming breadwinners of the home. The reason for this is during the current recession a lot of the positions that have been effected were investment bankers and construction workers; which as we know both positions are mainly fulfilled by male employers. This sort of flexibility has been recommended for quite some time by the different government agencies. I know that more and more of them are recommending flex locations allowing people to work from home or out of remote offices that may be closer to home. I can say that because of these recommendations it has helped my family out quite a bit. Prior to last May, my other had to care for my grandma as she had the highest stage of ALS possible. With this disease she dealt with taking her too many doctor appointments, along with having to care for her on many different levels. Because of this flexibility she was able to move her schedule around and help accommodate the needs of her mother. I am definitely a big fan of the program mainly because of that.

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Blog 34

During this past election our country overcame history in a lot more ways than one. First off, we had an African American run for president which in the end he ended up winning. However, we also had another large stepping stone as well we had two women involved in the running for some of the highest seats in offices as well. We had Hilary Clinton who was running for the democratic seat in the presidential election, who in turn ended up losing in the primaries to our now current president Barack Obama. As well as we had Sara Palin who ran with Senator John McCain as his vice presidential candidate. These two women have helped to break quite a bit of barriers that have been put in place for a quite a while in the political system. For the longest time to get into politics, the standard was that it was always a male. Now that we are becoming more and more equal between private and elected positions we are starting to see women break into these career fields that have always been so customarily locked by the male population. Now another item that was discussed in the course material was the advancement of women in the justice system. We are seeing more women continue to populate these fields as well. I remember reading an article that was discussing the departure of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. When she was getting ready to leave the bench, the discussion of who was going to take her position started to take place. During that time period a national poll was ran, who intern 80% of them thought another woman should take her place. Well in the mist of the article, people were saying that they felt more women should be on the Supreme Court. I personally believe we should be taking individuals that are most qualified for these positions, and not base them off of their gender.
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Blog 33

The advancement of woman in our justice system is nothing short of amazing. It was not very long ago that anything related to the justice field was nothing but men. They would be the ones that were sitting on the judge’s bench. They were the ones you would contact when you needed legal advice. They were the ones you spoke with when you needed an attorney. The justice system was just run by men. Fast forward to today and you still deal with many men in our justice system it still quite a bit of a ratio of men to women, however, the presence of women in the justice system is becoming more and more prevalent. As our country moves continuously moves forward to a more equal bipartisan type view on employment and gender women will continue to make an impact and overall movement into the justice field for a career. Now to this day even though they are moving and making more of an approach into the career they still have quite a few boundaries that they have to deal with. One of the biggest deals that they have the face is those attorneys who still think they are not capable of doing the job of an attorney. There are many old school attorneys out there that think just because they are a female they are not cut out for this sort of work. I remember reading about an attorney who was fired multiple times from many different practices. The reason she was fired was because she was not forceful enough when dealing with cases. She knew her job very well, she could manage and handle things very well but when it came down to it she was not able to stand up to her clients at times even when deciding it was in the best interest of them, and they were wanting to go the other way. Either way, they have come a long way but still have a lot of challenges ahead of them in this field of work.

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