December 7, 2009 • 19 mins
In response to the recent appointment of a new female justice to the Supreme Court and some controversial remarks, Molly and Cristen investigate whether or not gender affects a judge's effectiveness in this episode of Stuff Mom Never Told You.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From House Towards dot com. Hey, welcome to podcast. This
is Molly and I'm Kristen Christ. An important question, do
(00:21):
you ever plan to run for any sort of public office? Well,
I mean I didn't am prepping my campaign for president
two thousand and twelve. I don't know if you're be
old enough by two thousand twelve. It's a little something
called photoshop. Molly, come in handy. The reason I ask
(00:41):
is sometimes I think about things we've said on this podcast,
and how if we ever did run for public office,
our our enemies who just have so much ammunition of
an arsenal of just clips of us saying things about
penises and breasts and menstruation, And I just don't know
how long we'd last. So and I and I can
think of an example of a woman who probably did
(01:03):
not realize that she would be put into a higher
position and probably had some words come back to bite
her in the behind. Yeah, we are talking about the
newest Chief Justice on the Supreme Court, Sonia Sonamor. And
there was this huge controversy about this speech that she
delivered at the Law School at the University of California
(01:26):
at Berkeley in two thousand one, UM, which was usually
condensed down in sound bites to the wise latina can
make a better decision than a white man, and she
was blasted in the media for making this statement. Conservatives
use it as their number one argument that she would
be an activist judge and UM wasn't going to judge fairly.
(01:50):
But I thought that we should put a little context
to this quote because we're answering the question does a
woman make a better judge? I thought this would be
a good bouncing off point because the actual quote is
I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the
richness of her experiences would more often than not reach
a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived
(02:11):
that life. And what she's saying is that as a
Latina woman, she is bringing um a unique personal perspective
to the cases that she would hear. But I I
think it's important to note that right after that in
the speech, she said, let us not forget the wise
men like Oliver Wendell Holmes, and just as Cardoso voted
(02:31):
on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in
our society, and until nineteen seventy two, no Supreme Court
case has ever upheld the claim of a woman in
gender discrimination case. So she was kind of saying that,
you know, she has a unique personal experience, but that
isn't to discredit um the work of other prominent male
judges as well. So then this brings up the whole
(02:51):
question um that a lot of bloggers and magazines and
other news sources were discussing of whether or not um
in fact, women do make better judges or can't we
come to better decisions than men? And not only do
they make better judges, but does the Supreme Court need
more of them? Yeah, because at the time that she
(03:13):
was put on the bench, the only other female sitting
on the Supreme Court was Ruth Bider Ginsburg, who said
she was lonely up there. Yeah, she was really excited
when when Sodamayor was was nominated. So let's talk first
about whether they're better judges, because if if a woman
is a good judge, then she should be up for
you know, consideration for a Supreme Court position and not
(03:35):
subject to as soda Mayor was. Some claims that this
was just affirmative action, just putting a woman on for
the sake of putting a woman on the on the
court UM. And I think one of the best places
to to look for the answer is a paper published
in two thousand eight. This was published by the Social
Science Research Network and it was from a team of
researchers from from various universities. UM. Now, the first thing
(04:00):
that they that they found, which does not necessarily vode
well for U women women judging UM as adequately or
better than men. They said that on average, and this
is from an op ed they wrote in Slate, and
they said, on average, female judges are less qualified based
on traditional metrics than male judges. They have attended lower
ranked colleges and lower ranked law schools, They're less likely
(04:20):
to have had judicial clerkships, and they have less experience
in private practice before becoming judges. So that's one metric
that these authors came up with for their sleep peace
was just sort of traditional qualifications. But then they also
looked at three other pretty interesting things, productivity, influence, and independence.
Productivity being how many opinions the judges wrote, how frequently
(04:41):
the other judges relied on their pans off, and they
were cited that would be influence and independence being how
often the judges dissented from opinions written by judges who
belonged to the same political party. And this was where
it really started even out the differences between the male
and the female judges. Female judges were cited just as
often as male judges. They write as many opinions and
they are just and they are just as likely to
(05:03):
dissent and to dissent from opinions written by judges who
belonged to their party. So the findings are that once
they get on the bench, they are not, you know,
hindered by a lack of opportunity in their earlier years.
That they are being just as effective as these male
judges on the bench. Now, then the paper went on
to talk about do they make different decisions? Yeah, and
(05:24):
and they did this by um matching up methods to
thirteen different areas of laws. And they only found one
area of law that seemed to indicate that women might
in fact judge differently than men and influence male judges,
and that is in the case of sex discrimination. And
they said, um, for these disputes, the probability of a
(05:46):
judge deciding in favor of the party alleging discrimination decreases
by about ten percentage points when the judge is male. Likewise,
when a woman serves on a panel with men, that
men are significantly more likely to rule in favor of
the rights litigant. So basically what they're saying is, by
let's say, like a woman is going to court um
(06:08):
charging her employer of sex discrimination, they're saying, based on
their research that if a woman here's the case, she
will as a woman, be able to understand the prosecution's
argument a little better than men would and might be
able to broaden their perspective on the case and therefore
(06:30):
make the the woman more likely to to win her
case of sexual discrimination. So that's the conclusion that the
paper called Untangling the Causal Effects of on judging came
to you. Now, before that paper came out, I would
say the main um work that was cited in terms
of whether male and female judges was different was by
Carol Gilligan who wrote a book called In a Different Voice,
(06:50):
and she took that thing that Kristen was talking about,
where women will be more sympathetic to a case of
sex discrimination and applied it to all law. She said
basically that females and males have different moral reasoning, and
as a result, women are always going to try and
sympathize and uh find you know, common ground and be
kind of all mushy feely, whereas men are going to
(07:13):
look at the totality of circumstances, apply our law and
want to apply at the same every time. So that's
where I think, you know, a lot of people said
this is a really damaging way to look at the
difference between male and female judges. As we obviously, if
you're going before a court, you want you know what
you want. You want a fair judge. I want one standard. Yeah,
I would want I would not want the judge to
(07:33):
look at me as a man or a woman standing
in front of him. I would want them to see
me as, you know, simply a citizen who is presenting
a case. And you don't want to get into the
courtroom as the citizen presenting a case and go, man,
oh I got this man, he's gonna be all tough. Well,
And I think that the important thing that this two
thousand and eight study illuminates is the fact that they
(07:55):
say that the results of this exercise are now reasonably
clear the presence of women in the federal pellet judiciary
rarely has an empirical effect on judicial outcomes. I mean,
it's not in the bag if you go, if I
go before female judge, she's not necessarily going to rule
my favorite just because you know she's sympathetic to women,
not at all. So then the question becomes if women
are as good as men, But if they're not really
(08:17):
that different, then do you need more women? If we're
all coming to the same conclusions except in cases like
sex discrimination, family disputes, reproductive rights, then why do you
put more women on the bench. And that gets into
something called social legitimacy. And by social legitimacy, I think,
which you mean the fact that since our population is,
(08:37):
you know, more or less fifty fifty male female, is
it really right to have the standard bearers of the
lobby almost all male. Do we need that female voice
in there to represent our actual societal makeup? And I
think that even just looking at it beyond gender. You know,
when uh Sna Mayor linked Latiina to her Latin heritage,
(09:02):
to her femaleness, I think there's also the case we
made that we need more of racial diversity to reflect
how that's changing in society as well, because you know,
when Sandra did O'Connor was on the court, she was
very adam about saying, there's not any difference to this
thing about gender. You really don't bring your own differences
in rendering judgment. But then she would go on to
(09:23):
say that, um, the influence of justice third good, third
Good Marshal had did have an impact on the court
when he would talk about how he had experienced racial discrimination.
That offered a window into the world for people who
had not experienced facial discrimination. So basically the argument I
think that sort of r makes is that yes, we
all do have different backgrounds and they will affect the
(09:43):
cases that we see. Yeah, and there was this point
about um Sandrad O'Connor that said, like you said, she
was one of she's a big detractor of this so
called different voice theory of judging in the you know,
women will come to different decisions than men. And she
has been clear in that quote there's simply no empirical
instant gender differences lead to discernible differences in rendering judgment,
which is two thousand eight paper does kind of agrees
(10:06):
with but also um kind of points out that there
is a slight flaw in that argument. But this, uh,
this article also says some of paradoxically, O'Connor does believe
that the personal experiences of diverse juris influence the view
of their colleagues. But I don't know that that's really
that paradoxical. I think it's just more of an accurate
statement of saying that, you know, the personal experiences that
(10:29):
judges bring with them to the courts, whether they're male
or female, are going to influence their decision at some point.
For instance, uh Ruth Bader Ginsburg was recently interviewed by
New York Times magazine, and the interviewer asked her about
her thoughts on whether or not you know she thought that, um,
it was these studies were positive finding, you know, looking
(10:51):
into whether or not men and women make different judgments,
And she was replied, I'm very doubtful about those kind
of results. I certainly know that there are women in
federal courts with them. I disagree just as strongly as
I disagree with any man. I guess I have some
resistance to that kind of survey because it's what I
was arguing in the seventies, like in Mozart's opera Cozy Fontucci,
(11:11):
that's the way women are. And she also points out that,
you know, as Um with her own background background, being
Jewish and growing up, I think in what was it
in New York, all of those little factors, you know,
she went to human says like I went to camp
in the Adirondacks and you know, nineteen fifty whatever. She said,
all those experiences I'm bringing with me to the court,
(11:33):
and they're going to impact the way. I decided it
shouldn't come down to gender, right, But I did think
that in the interview she made some interesting points about
the challenges that women do face once they're on the court.
You know, she's talking about how the men can get
away with being very abrasive in their questioning. They interrupt
each other, they make their points very forcefully, whereas one
time she accidentally interrupted Sandra Day O'Connor and the headline was,
(11:54):
you know, rude Ruth interrupts Sandra. So I do think
that part of the problem in seeing women just as
equal to men on the bench is how our own
media treats them, how we perceive it. I mean you know,
this comes down to the issue we have with a
lot of podcast Christians. By calling out the differences ourselves
do we make it only harder for women to rise
above it. And also there as a kind of funny
(12:17):
in my opinion side note to all of this, there
was this one study done UM and I think it
was among South Carolina lawyers and judges that found This
was later picked up by other outlets and was reported
in the Guardian, and it found that women with more
typically masculine names have more legal success, like if they're
(12:38):
becoming lawyers, like getting legal appointments, than women with more
typically feminine names. Interesting. Yeah, but I mean women in
the law is a fairly new phenomenon. I was reading
that UM. I think was the first year all states
allowed women to practice law. So we've come a very
long way in a very short time. But as Ruth
Bader Ginsburg also pointed out in that that Q and
(12:58):
A with the New York Times mag a scene, we
still have a long way to go. She does find
it very disheartening that there are still so few women
on the Supreme Court bench, and she points to our
northern neighbors in Canada, where the Chief Justice is a woman,
and I think they're also I believe three other um
Canadian Supreme Court judges who are also women. And she
(13:19):
thinks it would be great if we had better representation
like that. Not necessarily because women judge better. It's not
like that. I mean, that's kind of hard to to
judge judging anyway. But um, simply for that social legitimacy
point that you brought up earlier. Okay, so listeners, let
(13:40):
us know what you think. Do you want to come
up before a maile judge or a female judge? Do
you think there's any difference. Do you think the Supreme
Court looks balanced? Tell us your thoughts, tell us your thoughts,
all right, Chris, and let's do some listener mail. Okay, Um,
these emails are gonna talk about are from our female
Circumcision episode. I'm gonna read one from a nameless so
it looks like the person writes, I cannot believe how
(14:02):
you guys presented the issue of female genital mutilation as
if it's totally a cultural female choice. These women do
not have a choice. This is something that is imposed
on women, whether they want to or not. Even women
that say they support this or inconsequential because it would
be the law whether they agreed or not in the
retarded culture they live in. I think we need to
call out retarded beliefs and practices and not accept everything
(14:23):
as a culturally relative issue. If I believe the world
is flat and would be offendtive told otherwise, that does
not change the fact the world is not flat. Please
man up and stop with your We are all correct
and all cultures are good attitude about everything. Please do
not be so scared about being so politically correct that
you will allow people to butcher women. I could not
believe how you guys were so casually presenting this issue
(14:45):
like it is a female choice. I was sickened to
hear this podcast. UM, and this is just one email
that we got that was a little bit unhappy with
the way, not even just a little bit unhappy and
pretty unhappy with um, the way we presented the issue
of female genital cutting. UM. A lot of people seem
to think that we were somehow endorsing the practice in
(15:08):
the name of cultural sensitivity and basically having a very
skewed perception of you know, what it actually is, and
basically using cultural relativism as you know, a blanket excuse
for allowing something like this to happen to three million girls,
and so um, obviously you know this is not uh,
(15:30):
female genital mutilation, female circumcision, female genital cutting, you know,
all all the different names for it. Is definitely not
something that Molly and I would endorse at all. However, Um,
we did think that it was important to present the
research that we found and to try to approach it
(15:51):
in an unbiased way. So UM, to give you kind
of an idea of the the official responses that we
gave to these listeners, I will read my response to
you that last email, so I said, I hate to
hear that you were sickened by the female Circumcision podcast.
Molly and I certainly weren't trying to approach it lightly,
but rather address both sides of the issue, because based
(16:12):
on our research, there's more than one angle to the debate.
Does that mean we agree with it, No, but we
felt responsibility, especially with a cultural right completely unfamiliar to us,
to take an unbiased approach in regard to the issue
of choice. That was a point raised by an anthropologist
we referenced. Instead of three million girls per year being
subjected to female genital mutilation. She advocated offering it as
(16:35):
a choice to women once they've matured. Today, the initiation
right is still commonly practiced, and offering it as a
choice might be a positive step along the way to
facing it out altogether and addressing the gender inequity associated
with it. While we do like to offer our opinions
and experiences on topics, Molly and I also think it's
crucial to present our listeners with research statistics and facts
(16:55):
from experts and allow listeners to form their own opinions.
Thank you for your criticism and taking the time to listen.
And I think we got a lot of emails that
basically said, you girls are very good about being fair
and balanced on a lot of topics, but this was
one that didn't deserve to be fair and balanced. But
I think that that we're always going to try and
be fair and balanced with our topics. But that's why
(17:17):
we have list our mails to hear from you guys
about your own opinions. Yeah, and I think one one
thing I pointed out to UH to one of the
listeners was um I said that kind of in retrospect,
I think maybe one of the reasons why we did
spend a decent amount of time talking about this issue
of UM female circumcision as choice, was because I frankly
(17:37):
was surprised to even see that research out there, and
on the Tierney Lab blog on the New York Times
where we first found a referenced about presenting female circumcision
as a choice kind of reflected the same level of outrage.
So I don't know, but I think I still think
that it was crucial for us to UM to talk
about all sides of the issue instead of just immediately
(18:00):
point to it and dismissing it as something barbaric and atricious.
And I think that even the research that was very
much against UM female general mutilation that was outraged by
it points out you can't just go into a culture
and say that your beliefs are to put it, as
this one email did, retarded. And you know, it's sort
(18:20):
of a friend to me that they would describe any
culture belief as retard in the first place, I don't
think that's a very good word to use in relation
to anyone's beliefs. But even getting away from that, UM,
I don't mind being called politically correct if I'm just
trying to present all the sides of why people think
something is and exists. Yeah, so, if you guys have
any more thoughts about it, please feel free to email us.
(18:43):
We appreciate um hearing from you, whether it is with
praise or with criticism. Exactly so, right as at Mom's
Stuff at how stuff works dot com, and as usual,
if you want to keep up with us during the week,
you can head over to our blog. It's called how
to stuff, and you can and find that and a
host of other articles on how stuff works dot com.
(19:07):
For more on this and thousands of other topics because
it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com home page brought to you by the reinvented two
thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From House Towards dot com. Hey, welcome to podcast. This
is Molly and I'm Kristen Christ. An important question, do
(00:21):
you ever plan to run for any sort of public office? Well,
I mean I didn't am prepping my campaign for president
two thousand and twelve. I don't know if you're be
old enough by two thousand twelve. It's a little something
called photoshop. Molly, come in handy. The reason I ask
(00:41):
is sometimes I think about things we've said on this podcast,
and how if we ever did run for public office,
our our enemies who just have so much ammunition of
an arsenal of just clips of us saying things about
penises and breasts and menstruation, And I just don't know
how long we'd last. So and I and I can
think of an example of a woman who probably did
(01:03):
not realize that she would be put into a higher
position and probably had some words come back to bite
her in the behind. Yeah, we are talking about the
newest Chief Justice on the Supreme Court, Sonia Sonamor. And
there was this huge controversy about this speech that she
delivered at the Law School at the University of California
(01:26):
at Berkeley in two thousand one, UM, which was usually
condensed down in sound bites to the wise latina can
make a better decision than a white man, and she
was blasted in the media for making this statement. Conservatives
use it as their number one argument that she would
be an activist judge and UM wasn't going to judge fairly.
(01:50):
But I thought that we should put a little context
to this quote because we're answering the question does a
woman make a better judge? I thought this would be
a good bouncing off point because the actual quote is
I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the
richness of her experiences would more often than not reach
a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived
(02:11):
that life. And what she's saying is that as a
Latina woman, she is bringing um a unique personal perspective
to the cases that she would hear. But I I
think it's important to note that right after that in
the speech, she said, let us not forget the wise
men like Oliver Wendell Holmes, and just as Cardoso voted
(02:31):
on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in
our society, and until nineteen seventy two, no Supreme Court
case has ever upheld the claim of a woman in
gender discrimination case. So she was kind of saying that,
you know, she has a unique personal experience, but that
isn't to discredit um the work of other prominent male
judges as well. So then this brings up the whole
(02:51):
question um that a lot of bloggers and magazines and
other news sources were discussing of whether or not um
in fact, women do make better judges or can't we
come to better decisions than men? And not only do
they make better judges, but does the Supreme Court need
more of them? Yeah, because at the time that she
(03:13):
was put on the bench, the only other female sitting
on the Supreme Court was Ruth Bider Ginsburg, who said
she was lonely up there. Yeah, she was really excited
when when Sodamayor was was nominated. So let's talk first
about whether they're better judges, because if if a woman
is a good judge, then she should be up for
you know, consideration for a Supreme Court position and not
(03:35):
subject to as soda Mayor was. Some claims that this
was just affirmative action, just putting a woman on for
the sake of putting a woman on the on the
court UM. And I think one of the best places
to to look for the answer is a paper published
in two thousand eight. This was published by the Social
Science Research Network and it was from a team of
researchers from from various universities. UM. Now, the first thing
(04:00):
that they that they found, which does not necessarily vode
well for U women women judging UM as adequately or
better than men. They said that on average, and this
is from an op ed they wrote in Slate, and
they said, on average, female judges are less qualified based
on traditional metrics than male judges. They have attended lower
ranked colleges and lower ranked law schools, They're less likely
(04:20):
to have had judicial clerkships, and they have less experience
in private practice before becoming judges. So that's one metric
that these authors came up with for their sleep peace
was just sort of traditional qualifications. But then they also
looked at three other pretty interesting things, productivity, influence, and independence.
Productivity being how many opinions the judges wrote, how frequently
(04:41):
the other judges relied on their pans off, and they
were cited that would be influence and independence being how
often the judges dissented from opinions written by judges who
belonged to the same political party. And this was where
it really started even out the differences between the male
and the female judges. Female judges were cited just as
often as male judges. They write as many opinions and
they are just and they are just as likely to
(05:03):
dissent and to dissent from opinions written by judges who
belonged to their party. So the findings are that once
they get on the bench, they are not, you know,
hindered by a lack of opportunity in their earlier years.
That they are being just as effective as these male
judges on the bench. Now, then the paper went on
to talk about do they make different decisions? Yeah, and
(05:24):
and they did this by um matching up methods to
thirteen different areas of laws. And they only found one
area of law that seemed to indicate that women might
in fact judge differently than men and influence male judges,
and that is in the case of sex discrimination. And
they said, um, for these disputes, the probability of a
(05:46):
judge deciding in favor of the party alleging discrimination decreases
by about ten percentage points when the judge is male. Likewise,
when a woman serves on a panel with men, that
men are significantly more likely to rule in favor of
the rights litigant. So basically what they're saying is, by
let's say, like a woman is going to court um
(06:08):
charging her employer of sex discrimination, they're saying, based on
their research that if a woman here's the case, she
will as a woman, be able to understand the prosecution's
argument a little better than men would and might be
able to broaden their perspective on the case and therefore
(06:30):
make the the woman more likely to to win her
case of sexual discrimination. So that's the conclusion that the
paper called Untangling the Causal Effects of on judging came
to you. Now, before that paper came out, I would
say the main um work that was cited in terms
of whether male and female judges was different was by
Carol Gilligan who wrote a book called In a Different Voice,
(06:50):
and she took that thing that Kristen was talking about,
where women will be more sympathetic to a case of
sex discrimination and applied it to all law. She said
basically that females and males have different moral reasoning, and
as a result, women are always going to try and
sympathize and uh find you know, common ground and be
kind of all mushy feely, whereas men are going to
(07:13):
look at the totality of circumstances, apply our law and
want to apply at the same every time. So that's
where I think, you know, a lot of people said
this is a really damaging way to look at the
difference between male and female judges. As we obviously, if
you're going before a court, you want you know what
you want. You want a fair judge. I want one standard. Yeah,
I would want I would not want the judge to
(07:33):
look at me as a man or a woman standing
in front of him. I would want them to see
me as, you know, simply a citizen who is presenting
a case. And you don't want to get into the
courtroom as the citizen presenting a case and go, man,
oh I got this man, he's gonna be all tough. Well,
And I think that the important thing that this two
thousand and eight study illuminates is the fact that they
(07:55):
say that the results of this exercise are now reasonably
clear the presence of women in the federal pellet judiciary
rarely has an empirical effect on judicial outcomes. I mean,
it's not in the bag if you go, if I
go before female judge, she's not necessarily going to rule
my favorite just because you know she's sympathetic to women,
not at all. So then the question becomes if women
are as good as men, But if they're not really
(08:17):
that different, then do you need more women? If we're
all coming to the same conclusions except in cases like
sex discrimination, family disputes, reproductive rights, then why do you
put more women on the bench. And that gets into
something called social legitimacy. And by social legitimacy, I think,
which you mean the fact that since our population is,
(08:37):
you know, more or less fifty fifty male female, is
it really right to have the standard bearers of the
lobby almost all male. Do we need that female voice
in there to represent our actual societal makeup? And I
think that even just looking at it beyond gender. You know,
when uh Sna Mayor linked Latiina to her Latin heritage,
(09:02):
to her femaleness, I think there's also the case we
made that we need more of racial diversity to reflect
how that's changing in society as well, because you know,
when Sandra did O'Connor was on the court, she was
very adam about saying, there's not any difference to this
thing about gender. You really don't bring your own differences
in rendering judgment. But then she would go on to
(09:23):
say that, um, the influence of justice third good, third
Good Marshal had did have an impact on the court
when he would talk about how he had experienced racial discrimination.
That offered a window into the world for people who
had not experienced facial discrimination. So basically the argument I
think that sort of r makes is that yes, we
all do have different backgrounds and they will affect the
(09:43):
cases that we see. Yeah, and there was this point
about um Sandrad O'Connor that said, like you said, she
was one of she's a big detractor of this so
called different voice theory of judging in the you know,
women will come to different decisions than men. And she
has been clear in that quote there's simply no empirical
instant gender differences lead to discernible differences in rendering judgment,
which is two thousand eight paper does kind of agrees
(10:06):
with but also um kind of points out that there
is a slight flaw in that argument. But this, uh,
this article also says some of paradoxically, O'Connor does believe
that the personal experiences of diverse juris influence the view
of their colleagues. But I don't know that that's really
that paradoxical. I think it's just more of an accurate
statement of saying that, you know, the personal experiences that
(10:29):
judges bring with them to the courts, whether they're male
or female, are going to influence their decision at some point.
For instance, uh Ruth Bader Ginsburg was recently interviewed by
New York Times magazine, and the interviewer asked her about
her thoughts on whether or not you know she thought that, um,
it was these studies were positive finding, you know, looking
(10:51):
into whether or not men and women make different judgments,
And she was replied, I'm very doubtful about those kind
of results. I certainly know that there are women in
federal courts with them. I disagree just as strongly as
I disagree with any man. I guess I have some
resistance to that kind of survey because it's what I
was arguing in the seventies, like in Mozart's opera Cozy Fontucci,
(11:11):
that's the way women are. And she also points out that,
you know, as Um with her own background background, being
Jewish and growing up, I think in what was it
in New York, all of those little factors, you know,
she went to human says like I went to camp
in the Adirondacks and you know, nineteen fifty whatever. She said,
all those experiences I'm bringing with me to the court,
(11:33):
and they're going to impact the way. I decided it
shouldn't come down to gender, right, But I did think
that in the interview she made some interesting points about
the challenges that women do face once they're on the court.
You know, she's talking about how the men can get
away with being very abrasive in their questioning. They interrupt
each other, they make their points very forcefully, whereas one
time she accidentally interrupted Sandra Day O'Connor and the headline was,
(11:54):
you know, rude Ruth interrupts Sandra. So I do think
that part of the problem in seeing women just as
equal to men on the bench is how our own
media treats them, how we perceive it. I mean you know,
this comes down to the issue we have with a
lot of podcast Christians. By calling out the differences ourselves
do we make it only harder for women to rise
above it. And also there as a kind of funny
(12:17):
in my opinion side note to all of this, there
was this one study done UM and I think it
was among South Carolina lawyers and judges that found This
was later picked up by other outlets and was reported
in the Guardian, and it found that women with more
typically masculine names have more legal success, like if they're
(12:38):
becoming lawyers, like getting legal appointments, than women with more
typically feminine names. Interesting. Yeah, but I mean women in
the law is a fairly new phenomenon. I was reading
that UM. I think was the first year all states
allowed women to practice law. So we've come a very
long way in a very short time. But as Ruth
Bader Ginsburg also pointed out in that that Q and
(12:58):
A with the New York Times mag a scene, we
still have a long way to go. She does find
it very disheartening that there are still so few women
on the Supreme Court bench, and she points to our
northern neighbors in Canada, where the Chief Justice is a woman,
and I think they're also I believe three other um
Canadian Supreme Court judges who are also women. And she
(13:19):
thinks it would be great if we had better representation
like that. Not necessarily because women judge better. It's not
like that. I mean, that's kind of hard to to
judge judging anyway. But um, simply for that social legitimacy
point that you brought up earlier. Okay, so listeners, let
(13:40):
us know what you think. Do you want to come
up before a maile judge or a female judge? Do
you think there's any difference. Do you think the Supreme
Court looks balanced? Tell us your thoughts, tell us your thoughts,
all right, Chris, and let's do some listener mail. Okay, Um,
these emails are gonna talk about are from our female
Circumcision episode. I'm gonna read one from a nameless so
it looks like the person writes, I cannot believe how
(14:02):
you guys presented the issue of female genital mutilation as
if it's totally a cultural female choice. These women do
not have a choice. This is something that is imposed
on women, whether they want to or not. Even women
that say they support this or inconsequential because it would
be the law whether they agreed or not in the
retarded culture they live in. I think we need to
call out retarded beliefs and practices and not accept everything
(14:23):
as a culturally relative issue. If I believe the world
is flat and would be offendtive told otherwise, that does
not change the fact the world is not flat. Please
man up and stop with your We are all correct
and all cultures are good attitude about everything. Please do
not be so scared about being so politically correct that
you will allow people to butcher women. I could not
believe how you guys were so casually presenting this issue
(14:45):
like it is a female choice. I was sickened to
hear this podcast. UM, and this is just one email
that we got that was a little bit unhappy with
the way, not even just a little bit unhappy and
pretty unhappy with um, the way we presented the issue
of female genital cutting. UM. A lot of people seem
to think that we were somehow endorsing the practice in
(15:08):
the name of cultural sensitivity and basically having a very
skewed perception of you know, what it actually is, and
basically using cultural relativism as you know, a blanket excuse
for allowing something like this to happen to three million girls,
and so um, obviously you know this is not uh,
(15:30):
female genital mutilation, female circumcision, female genital cutting, you know,
all all the different names for it. Is definitely not
something that Molly and I would endorse at all. However, Um,
we did think that it was important to present the
research that we found and to try to approach it
(15:51):
in an unbiased way. So UM, to give you kind
of an idea of the the official responses that we
gave to these listeners, I will read my response to
you that last email, so I said, I hate to
hear that you were sickened by the female Circumcision podcast.
Molly and I certainly weren't trying to approach it lightly,
but rather address both sides of the issue, because based
(16:12):
on our research, there's more than one angle to the debate.
Does that mean we agree with it, No, but we
felt responsibility, especially with a cultural right completely unfamiliar to us,
to take an unbiased approach in regard to the issue
of choice. That was a point raised by an anthropologist
we referenced. Instead of three million girls per year being
subjected to female genital mutilation. She advocated offering it as
(16:35):
a choice to women once they've matured. Today, the initiation
right is still commonly practiced, and offering it as a
choice might be a positive step along the way to
facing it out altogether and addressing the gender inequity associated
with it. While we do like to offer our opinions
and experiences on topics, Molly and I also think it's
crucial to present our listeners with research statistics and facts
(16:55):
from experts and allow listeners to form their own opinions.
Thank you for your criticism and taking the time to listen.
And I think we got a lot of emails that
basically said, you girls are very good about being fair
and balanced on a lot of topics, but this was
one that didn't deserve to be fair and balanced. But
I think that that we're always going to try and
be fair and balanced with our topics. But that's why
(17:17):
we have list our mails to hear from you guys
about your own opinions. Yeah, and I think one one
thing I pointed out to UH to one of the
listeners was um I said that kind of in retrospect,
I think maybe one of the reasons why we did
spend a decent amount of time talking about this issue
of UM female circumcision as choice, was because I frankly
(17:37):
was surprised to even see that research out there, and
on the Tierney Lab blog on the New York Times
where we first found a referenced about presenting female circumcision
as a choice kind of reflected the same level of outrage.
So I don't know, but I think I still think
that it was crucial for us to UM to talk
about all sides of the issue instead of just immediately
(18:00):
point to it and dismissing it as something barbaric and atricious.
And I think that even the research that was very
much against UM female general mutilation that was outraged by
it points out you can't just go into a culture
and say that your beliefs are to put it, as
this one email did, retarded. And you know, it's sort
(18:20):
of a friend to me that they would describe any
culture belief as retard in the first place, I don't
think that's a very good word to use in relation
to anyone's beliefs. But even getting away from that, UM,
I don't mind being called politically correct if I'm just
trying to present all the sides of why people think
something is and exists. Yeah, so, if you guys have
any more thoughts about it, please feel free to email us.
(18:43):
We appreciate um hearing from you, whether it is with
praise or with criticism. Exactly so, right as at Mom's
Stuff at how stuff works dot com, and as usual,
if you want to keep up with us during the week,
you can head over to our blog. It's called how
to stuff, and you can and find that and a
host of other articles on how stuff works dot com.
(19:07):
For more on this and thousands of other topics because
it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com home page brought to you by the reinvented two
thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.