November 5, 2014 • 42 mins
The verdict on female lawyers' proper courtroom attire is murky at best. Cristen and Caroline investigate why workplace wardrobe is particularly vexing for women attorneys and how that reflects on broader gender equity issues in legal professions.
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 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you From how supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, and today we're going to talk about
something that pulls in aspects from our episode on modesty,
(00:23):
things that we've talked about before with women's fashion and
also women working in more male dominated environments, and that
is taking a look at what it's like for women
in law and particularly this aspect of dressing as a
lady lawyer. Yeah, it really seems like women out there
(00:47):
practicing law face a lot of flak that their male
counterparts don't have to. And we got a letter from
a woman named Bonnie who was actually responding to another
listener letter we had read on an episode that addressed
the whole issue of female attorney fashion struggles. And Bonnie
(01:08):
said that, you know, I would love it if you
did a podcast on this topic. And she said, I'm
sure we share a lot of struggles with other professionals
and women working in a typically male environment. Not only
are there the typical struggles like work life balance and
making partner, but there are also things I encountered that
I never imagine would happen. For one, I've been asked
if I was a client, a secretary, or a court
(01:29):
reporter on multiple occasions. It's rarely assumed by default that
you're the lawyer unless you're standing behind the council table
by yourself. One time, a witness actually pointed at me
during a deposition and asked, who's the girl? She says,
Believe it or not, I've even been touched in mildly
inappropriate ways by male attorneys and even a judge. This
wasn't at some cocktail party either. This was during court
(01:50):
conferences where you'd think nothing like that would ever occur.
I knew I would encounter misogyny in my career, that
both these instances were totally unexpected. So Bonnie and to
all of our other listeners out there working in and
around the legal profession, this episode is for you, and
I hope the rest of you guys can also learn
(02:10):
a thing or two about just the weird kind of
double standards that go on in a courtroom. Yeah, because
I have a feeling that this is a lot of
this will be reflective of a lot of women's experiences,
just in terms of that question of how to dress
in a professional manner. So when it comes to court
(02:36):
room fashions, it's always come with specific decorum and rules
for how you should dress. So if we look, for instance,
over to England, the traditional attire for judges is just
one maybe more extreme example. Yeah, it's there's some fabulous,
(02:57):
fabulous fashion rules for seventeenth century judges in England. They
had to wear long robes complete with ermine and taffada
our silk, a full hood with a cow covering their shoulders,
and a cloak, and ladies and gentlemen there were colors.
Their robes were green and summer and violet and winter.
(03:19):
But all of this fabulous fashion just meant that they
startorially fit in with everybody else who was attending the
royal court at the time. For instance, those white powdered
wigs that we associate with this period and with English
lawyers was just what was considered polite to wear out
in society. So it was incorporated into court dress as well,
(03:39):
And in sixteen thirty five we see possibly the first
court dress code, which was the definitive guide for judges
on what to wear in the courtroom. It basically told
them what robes to wear, when and how. Now, once
we get into the mid eighteenth century, rules have changed
just a little bit, so during criminal trials a less
(04:02):
formal version of the robes was used. This would be
a scarlet robe, black scarf and scarlet casting hood, also
known as a tippet or stole. And then in civil
trials some judges had had begun to wear an all
black silk gown and in great tafoda in the mid
eighteenth century was becoming increasingly popular as an alternative to
(04:26):
the pink tafoa used on some robes. So I love this.
I love that there are such like strongly delineated rules
for what these male judges were wearing and how and
when to wear pink and violet purple. Yeah, exactly. And
there are so many more fashion dues and down'ts for
(04:49):
these male judges that we could get into, but you know,
we have a share to run, so if we move
over to America. This is coming from an essay written
by former Supreme Court Justice Standard O'Connor, who's providing us
historical insights about this side of the pond, and she
talks about how those colorful rogue traditions and ornate wigs
they never really took off here and The theory is
(05:12):
that Thomas Jefferson himself opposed the unnecessary pomp and quote
needless official apparel, especially the monstrous wig which makes the
English judges look like rats peeping through bushes of oakum.
And I had no idea what oakum meant. Apparently it's
a loose fiber from untangled rope that was especially used
for cocking wooden ships. So there you go, and something
(05:33):
that apparently you just don't want to look like. It's
a sick burn from Jefferson. Yeah, he was always dropping
those those sick oakum burns um. But she talks about
O'Connor does about the portrait of the first Chief Justice,
John j that shows him wearing a black and red
robe with white boarders. But by eighteen o one, when
(05:55):
John Marshall became Chief Justice, it was all black for
the justices. But that's all tradition. There are no written
rules about what judges must wear, which I thought was
really interesting, although there have been a couple exceptions. For instance,
O'Connor talks about how she began wearing a white collar,
(06:16):
which sort of stepped out of via all black unspoken rules.
But more significantly, former Chief Justice rhyan Quist had gold
bands sewn onto his robe after he saw it in
an opera that I believe like involved a judge figure,
(06:36):
and he liked it so much he had it sewn
on to his I mean, and you know, if you're
going to be chief justice, why not add a little flair.
I imagine that's striking. My father is a former pilot,
and so he had the gold bands on his black
uniform as well well. And we've talked to about how
Ruth Bader Ginsburg has her special jabbows that she wears
(06:59):
for different occasion. But men don't wear those fancy collars,
and we are definitely here to talk about those gender divisions.
That's right, Caroline. Things aren't so black and white though,
when it comes to people appearing before judges, especially women.
And this is coming from a gallery over at the
Cut with New York Magazine from and they wrote, historically,
(07:23):
the courtroom wardrobes of high profile people have carried meaning
as well. Right, So if we go back in time,
and I meant this might seem like a very strange
jump all of a sudden, but if we go back
to Joan of arc, so she had a ton of
trials because you know, she was accused of being a
heretic for hearing voices, so at the end of one
of her many trials, she promised, Hey, I am gonna
(07:47):
stop hearing the voices you guys, and just to throw
in there something extra, I'm also gonna stop wearing male clothing.
Of course, she started wearing it again while she was
in prison, possibly to avoid sexual assault, and she claimed
that it was more lawful and convenient. Shortly thereafter, Joan
was judged to be a relapsed heretic and was executed.
(08:08):
And so as you can tell, we're definitely getting into
what your clothes say about you when you appear in
the courtroom. Well, clearly Marie Antoinette thought a lot about that,
because during her imprisonment she wore a black morning gown
for six months straight and defiance of a ban on black,
which at that time symbolized sympathy for the monarchy. And
(08:31):
when she was later tried on an array of charges,
including a vindictive glance yikes France, wow that rhymed, she
came to the courtroom in a tattered dress, which caused
one guard to note quote her long black dress rendered
her extraordinary pallor all the more striking and clearly she
(08:51):
was trying to in gender sympathy. Um, but of course
that didn't really work because she was executed. But for
her execution, she wore a pristine white dress. Yeah, and
she accessed or ezes to match. This lady knew what
she was doing. I mean, it didn't work, it kind
of backfired, but she looked fabulous. And then if we
(09:13):
jump forward to uh, modern times, we have to point
out Martha Stewart, who was roundly criticized for wearing clothes
that drew attention to her wealth, things like fancy first dolls,
broken bags. People were basically saying, like, what are you
doing flaunting how much money you have? Rich lady? Martha's
being Martha and Martha will always do Martha. Martha's you
(09:35):
and Martha. But that brings us to today. What about
we talked about women in front of the court bench.
What about the lawyers, the people responsible for pleading their
clients cases. Obviously, male or female lawyers are expected to
dress professionally in court because you want to be taken
(09:56):
seriously and yet not distracting or give the jury the
wrong impression because you're representing your clients. Yeah, but the
whole thing is that nobody needs to be a jerk
about it. And preparing for this episode, I was so
taken aback at how shamey people could be, specifically women,
(10:18):
let alone men when it comes to advising women attorneys
how to dress, and how contradictory so much of that
advice is. Yeah, it's never really been easy for women
lawyers to dress themselves for court because for men, they
have a uniform, it's a suit and a tie, whereas
women have more options perhaps, but they're kind of penalized
(10:42):
no matter what, because and I've found this surprising, you
wear a pant suit and you're considered too masculine, but
sometimes if you wear the wrong skirt and heels, you're
considered too feminine. And when this conversation really started getting
off the ground in the nineteen seventies and eighties, women
try to play it safe by adopting male style. So
(11:04):
we would wear skirt suits with ham's below the kneecap
and button down shirts and even these floppy bow ties
because we needed ties to apparently, but we would often
accessorize with pearls or ruffles to have as Uh and
Farmer writing for the American Bar Association's Perspectives magazine to
(11:25):
have feminine apologetic disclaimers, which actually is a term coined
by sociologist Jan Felsion. So we would be kind of
emulating men in the basic styles, but also offering those
touches to say, oh, still a woman here and don't worry, right,
I mean, that's totally a fine line that women were
(11:45):
walking and they were emulating men, because who else were
they going to emulate? You know? There. It wasn't like
in the eighties and even now there were a ton
of women in higher up legal positions. Uh, it definitely
is and was a male dominated fashion. And so Farmer
points out that in the eighties women finally did find
an ounce of inspiration in the form of l a
(12:08):
law character Grace van Owen, who wore silk V neck blouses,
and she talked to a Farmer, talked to a judge
who is discussing how women in the eighties just like
ran out and everybody had this silk V neck blouse
because like, well they did it with her on TV
and it looks nice. You didn't have to have rock
the floppy floppy bow tie anymore. So, working girl, although
(12:32):
I mean, I like a floppy bow tie every now
and then. I'll admit it, um. But even today, things
have not gotten any easier since the eighties for women
in law school and practicing law. For instance, in two
thousand nine, at a Seventh Circuit Bar Association meeting, a
panel of judges and lawyers complained about women's attire. We
(12:54):
have Chief Judge Michael P. Mccuski of the U. S.
District Court for the Central District of Illinois. How does
he fit all that? On a business card? He said
that he'd observed female participants at moot court competitions in
law school wearing quote, skirts so short there's no way
they can sit down, and blouses so short there's no
(13:17):
way the judges wouldn't look. Because you know, we've mentioned that. Yeah,
there're if you were female lawyers practicing a lot of times,
but by far, if you're standing before a judge, you
have a really good chance and even better chance that
he is a man. Right. And I think that quote
sums up attitudes about women and their attire so well,
(13:39):
because so the first part, the skirts so short, there's
no way that they can sit down. That's like a blaming,
blaming the woman who's wearing the attire and then bloustes
so short, there's no way the judges wouldn't look. That's
admitting that there's a bunch of pervy old men sitting
in the courtroom. But in response to this, judge A.
Benjamin Goldger of the U. S. Bankruptcy Court for the
(14:01):
Northern District of Illinois said that women lawyers dressing too
sexually is quote a huge problem. You don't dress in
court as if it's Saturday night and you're going out
to a party. Yeah, I mean the true you want
to dress professionally, but let's not single out women. Okay,
And he didn't he he was actually equally unhappy with
(14:24):
men wearing loud graphic ties. But this is not where
this kind of fashion scrutiny stops, because I mean, I
don't know if you guys knew it, but judges are
apparently closet fashion. He says similarly in two thousand ten,
although this wasn't so judge heavy. Nonetheless, the Chicago Bar
(14:44):
Association's Young Lawyers section held a What Not to Wear
fashion show that brought judges, law professors, and law students
altogether to critique mostly female courtroom fashions on a runway UM,
which very fact that that happened attracted a lot of
media attention. I feel like almost every article that we
(15:06):
read on this topic, Caroline highlighted this, this Chicago Barrow
Association meeting. Well, yeah, because I think there wasn't like,
you know, media coverage so to speak, of this event.
But there were there were two bloggers in particular who
were present, and one was like, yeah, you tell them,
and the other one was like seriously, So she she
(15:28):
laid out the roles as she had interpreted them, which
was basically like there's nothing that you can wear and
get away with, like you're darned if you do, darned
if you don't. Well, and it probably also ties in
two things that we've talked about, particularly in the modesty
episode on not only is there that fine line, but
it probably gets even finer depending on your body type.
(15:50):
All sorts of factors going into that um. In June, though,
it's worth noting that in Tennessee Circuit Judge Royce Taylor
got so fed up with complaints from other attorneys about
courtroom dress, particularly among women, that he said a dress
code in his courtroom for female attorneys, and we will
(16:11):
say that he also found a male attorney in contempt
for not wearing a blazer. But his reason for this
was that your personal appearance in court is a reflection
upon the entire legal profession. Okay, totally valid um. And
Nashville attorney Carla Miller's response to this was definitely on
Taylor's side. She said that some ladies are dressing in
(16:34):
a manner that should be bothersome to other lady lawyers
who strive to be professional. And she breaks it down, y'all,
Carla gets Carla gets serious. She says, here's the thing.
We girls, we like making fashion statements. It's about individualism.
Maybe the courtroom is not a place to show your
individualism via fashion. Now I'm just assuming that Miller is
(16:58):
also from Tennessee, and so I affected the Tennessee accent perfect,
and you know, all of these things they have points
to them as far as dressing professionally. But and I'm
going to keep saying that, but I'm also going to
keep saying that it's it's just kind of icky though
when it comes to the focus on women. But all
(17:22):
of this extends this, these expectations, these rules, they all
extend back to before you're even in the courtroom, when
you're just a law student. In March, Loyola Law School
sent a memo to students about appropriate behavior for their
externships that included a special note for women, which said,
(17:43):
I really don't need to mention that cleavage and stiletto
heels are not appropriate office where outside of ridiculous lawyer
TV shows do I Yet I'm getting complaints from supervisors
and it's important to note, uh that there were no
ash and guidelines in this memo for men, and I
think you know the content of that message is bad enough.
(18:06):
Do you really need to be snarky? I feel like
there was that was snark laden. Well, all of these
are just various examples of how there really isn't an
established way for women to dress because it's going to
vary from judge to judge. Because going into this episode,
I assumed that, Okay, the proper and safest way for
(18:31):
a female lawyer to dress in front of a judge
is to just wear a pant suit. Yeah. I would
have assumed that as well, you wear a modest button
down blazer pant suit. Done, But no, because they're also
judges who do not like pant suits on women because
they find them too masculinizing. And in fact, this kind
of blew my mind. A lot of law clerks will
(18:54):
get word out to female attorneys before a case start,
before a trial starts, to let them know how judges
prefer that they dressed, not in the gross sense of
the term, but in terms of courtroom decorum. But I
had no idea that courtroom decorum would be that specific
(19:15):
to how women dress. I mean, this does also apply
to some men. I mean, we've mentioned the guy who
held a male attorney in contemptive court for not wearing
a blazer for instance. However it's still I mean for men, yeah,
wear a pant suit and you'll be safe, but not
so much for women. Right, It's very strange that there's
no advice to men out there to hey, kind of
(19:37):
kind of feel out the courtroom environment and see what
is safe for you to wear. But that's the bulk
of advice to women attorneys. And Anna Akbari is a
New York University professor who tells herself as a sociologist, entrepreneur,
and the thinking person stylist, had a lot to say
for women attorneys about how to dress. She says, if
(19:59):
you're going to wear a suit, a skirt suit registers
better than a pant suit. In male dominated fields like law,
skirts and dresses are particularly rewarded as they are more
appealing to men. In interview situations, in particular, women should
always wear a skirt or dress as it is heavily
favored over pants by interviewers, many of whom are men.
(20:20):
And at this point, I flipped my laptop over destroyed
that it caught on fire, and I've since bought a
new one. Uh, that was my response to Akbari. Well,
and if you do toss on a skirt or a
dress and heels, there are even further rules for that
of well, what's the proper length, what about the bus line?
How much arm can I show? How much color can
(20:43):
I wear? There are even rules about how Um, women
lawyers want to should avoid wearing high heels with red
souls because that will draw too much attention, or avoid
wearing too bright of colors, never wear pink. All these
things be feminine, but not too feminine. Um. But going
to Akbari's previsent point of how a little more feminine
(21:09):
sexy attire is appreciated. Judge Richard Copp caught a lot
of flak in March on his blog when I Forget,
I don't remember what this was in response to, but
he wrote a post about how there was he think
God left her anonymous a quote very pretty female lawyer
(21:30):
um in her late twenties, who's brilliant, but also tends
to where as he calls it very short skirts and
shows lots of her ample chest, and how he especially
appreciates the last two attributes and those are direct quotes,
and he goes on to talk about how female law
clerks sneered at this woman behind her back and called
(21:53):
her unprofessional and did directly like get slut shamy with
her for this. And so his conclude susion for women
lawyers in considering how to dress is well, you can't win.
Quote men are both pigs and prudes. Get over it.
So that um, women listening, if you're in law school,
(22:16):
what a challenge? What a challenge? Yeah, And a lot
of the flak that he received was not only for
just being gross, because he admits in that blog post
that he's a dirty old man, which is he's probably
he he would say if he were sitting in this
studio right now, he would say that was clearly a joke. No. Well,
(22:37):
in his response he did post response, he apologized for it,
and he basically said that he tried and failed to
use edgy humor. And as someone who enjoys reading and writing,
I say that humor is very tricky. You're right, just
(22:57):
try not to use it. If you're not very good
at it. Maybe stay to your day job judge. Oh yeah, hey,
well I know, yeah, stick to being a judge. And
a lot of people responded to his really gross blog
by saying, um, this is embarrassing for you and for
me for the fact that you're a judge. So the
question though, is why why are there Why why does
(23:18):
this tight rope even exist? Um? So they are all
sorts of theories as to why this happens. Of course,
we could circle around to evolutionary biology. Um. There was
a study published in the journal Aggressive Behavior in two
thousand eleven called the Intolerance of Sexy Peers, and it
(23:41):
really focuses on women being judgmental toward how other women dress,
such as the case of those women law clerks throwing
shade at the lady lawyer. Um. The study would say
that this was really these women, these law clerks, acting
in a sexually protective manner, or I should say a
(24:03):
sexually self protective manner, because the idea, according to this study,
is that women get judge against other women who we
think are dressing too provocatively because we consider them a
sexual threat. Although I really doubt that that's happening in
a courtroom. Yeah, well, you know, people probably tend not
(24:24):
to bring their boyfriends or husbands to the courtroom, and
so they probably don't have to be worried about anyone
getting stolen because a lady lawyer is wearing a blouse.
If you have two single ladies listening, if you're looking
to meet a man, sign up for Jerry Duty I
s I p um so. Another theory, another conversation that's
(24:44):
happening about why there are so many perceived or anecdotal
problems with what women attorneys are wearing has to do
with this need to control women. And this is coming
from Valerie LaRue. She was writing in Miss j D
in June, and she says that it's not just men.
Women will do the policing of other women for men.
(25:09):
And she says that basically, you know, our culture still
judges women, even the most powerful women like Hillary Clinton,
by a completely different standard, one inferior to men. And
she goes on to give other nonclothing examples, but it's
basically that idea of you know, where are all the
rules for men, like, yes, wear a suit, wear a
nice tie, don't be too flashy, all that stuff. But
(25:29):
why why there's so many there's so many websites out
there and blogs and whatever dedicated to telling women what
to wear and how they're failing and looking skanky or whatever.
Don't let your tramp stamp show was part of that
Chicago fashion show. Um, And it's part of this whole
thing of like, oh, well, we're nervous maybe subconsciously about
women being in such a male dominated field. Well, and
(25:52):
Jill Philipovic, who is a litigator turned journalist who focuses
a lot on sexism and feminism, has said that it
quote gives sexist men and women because remember, this is
not just something perpetuated by men, Women are also doing
this to women. It gives sexist men and women the
(26:13):
ability to discriminate both in hiring and giving projects to
brand female attorneys based on appropriateness, which too often correlates
to perceived social class, of which race also factors in,
and to body type. I mean, all of this just
traces back to policing women's bodies, and also this whole
(26:35):
thing of law in particular being very much a male domain.
I mean, at the top of the podcast, when we
were talking about judges fashions, it was exclusive to men
because they were the only judges there. And only now
are we even starting to see more of uh something
akin to gender parity in the courtroom. Yeah, and we're
(26:57):
going to talk more about this gender divide with fashion.
We come right back from a quick break. So when
we left off, I had mentioned that at the top
of the podcast we were talking about those British judges
that it was all men. Um. There was a source
that we found talking about how today in Britain, their
(27:21):
court room decorum of wearing the robes and wigs might
seem sillier old fashioned, but it's a lot easier to
follow than these rules stateside, because quote, at least you
can wear basically anything you want under the rope and
still look just like your male colleagues. No one would
(27:43):
mistake you, as in the case of the stuff. I've
never told you listener we heard from no one would
mistake you for a core reporter or paralegal. Yeah, so
those rules, those dress codes that involve wearing robes could
actually be pretty pretty beneficial. It's specially in a male
dominated courtroom or if just hanging out in your house
(28:04):
robes for all. Anyone who keeps up with celebrity news
lately would probably know what we're talking about. If you're
not already, you know, living in England would be really
familiar with this whole wig thing because the woman that
George Clooney just married, who is a lawyer in England,
had barristaff she is. She had her picture circulating in
(28:24):
the media with her tiny little white wig on. Ah. Yeah,
so it's it's a thing and women do it too,
and it you know, it's it's got to make things easier.
It has to one with things. I mean, yeah, well,
never mind how to solve sexism in the courtroom. Wigs
and robes done end of podcasts perfect well, So part
of this whole issue. You know, we've talked about the
(28:45):
male dominated stuff a bunch and the fact that women
lack role models, and Amanda has talked about this over
it's slate talking about how many law firms still lack
female partners who can kind of show the rookies how
it's done. She says that only four of the top
two hundred law firms in the US have female managing partners,
(29:06):
and so following the advice on the website Corporate run
by attorney Cat Griffin can really prove to be a bummer,
because Griffin's advice is to play it safe, ladies, until
you see a senior lawyer do it. But the whole
problem is that statistically, there just aren't a whole lot
of women partners and judges out there to look to
(29:28):
for your fashion guidelines. However, there are plenty of women
in law school. Um, I mean, if we just look
at law firms, it's kind of astounding to compare those
statistics to statistics of the numbers of women in law school,
because it's fairly equal. There are just slightly fewer women
pursuing their j d s in the US as there
(29:50):
are men. Um And these stats are coming from a
Catalyst report from and it talked about how law firms
in particular might not have as many women among their
ranks because they're very much set up around a male
model because they don't have family friendly environments. I mean,
(30:11):
law is notorious for its long hours, particularly if you're
in a private practice where billable hours rule the day,
and so you make your money and get the attention
by putting in those long days. It's a lot of
tedious work. If a client calls, you have to, you know,
be able to pick up and respond. And it talks
(30:34):
about how motherhood stirs up a benevolent paternalism as well,
and so it creates a drain because even though there
are lots of women in law school, they start to
siphon off the higher up you climb, right, and so
Deborah Epstein Henry who's who's an author and former lawyer,
talks about what we need to kind of help with this,
(30:55):
both in the what do I wear arena as well
as in the how do I Progress in my career arena.
She says that until you have representation of women on
influential committees and boards a critical mass. She says, women
are not comfortable voicing their opinions. And this also applies
to taking chances and all sorts of things, all the
(31:16):
way down to what they wear in court. And so
let's take a deeper dive into some of the numbers.
So as opposed to the just over forty seven percent
of women who make up j D students just in
the United States, according to the American Bar Association, women
as of make up only thirty three percent of the
legal profession. And if you look just at lawyers, you
(31:40):
also see the pipeline start to thin. So when it
comes to summer associates probably rush out of law school,
forty seven point seven percent of them are women, and
then forty percent or associate our associates excuse me, and
then are full blown lawyers. But of course when we
(32:02):
move from being a lawyer to being a partner, even
fewer women in there. That's right. In two eleven, women
made up just nineteen point five percent of partners, and
eleven percent of the largest US law firms had no
women on their governing committees. Women did appear, however, to
be more successful in single tier firms, where promotion rates
(32:26):
for them as equity partners was strongest. And basically, an
equity partner is a part owner of the business. But
one little fact about women equity partners and law firms,
They do, on average make about eighty six percent of
what their male equity partners make, So the wage gap
(32:48):
still exists even at that top tier. Moving out of
law firms though, and looking at general councils at Fortune
five hundred companies, women comprise about eighteen point eight percent
of those lawyers. And I just mentioned a wage gap. Yes,
in fact, it exists for lawyers as well. Women lawyers
are making about twenty percent less than male lawyers as
(33:11):
of two thousand twelve, and so in terms of numbers
for lawyers, it's even worse for women of color. Women
of color makeup just eleven percent of associates, two percent
of partners, and there are only fifteen general councils who
are women of color in Fortune five companies. And if
we bring it full circle and get back to talking
(33:32):
about judges and look at the courts. In twenty three
of all federal judge ships were held by women, and
just of state judgeships were held by women. So I
do wonder, then, what whether this conversation would be happening
at least as much if there were more women behind
(33:52):
the bench, Because regardless of what the gender makeup is
in a courtroom, there will still and always be rules
of decorum, as I think there should be. But it
seems like something needs to happen in terms of making
these fashion rules not so much a part of the
(34:15):
daily grind of being a woman lawyer, because shouldn't they
be focusing more of their attention and concerns on, oh,
I don't know, the actual law in cases. It seems
like a lot of energy is possibly being diverted into
these other kinds of things. Yeah, as my therapist would say, interesting,
you're you're showing a lot of energy around this topic.
(34:36):
I wonder why that is, And I do think that
a lot of it has to do with there is
still even after all of this time, there is still
so much like shaming going on, like making almost trying
to make women feel unwelcome in the courtroom and so
putting the focus on their appearance rather than their actual deeds. Well,
(35:00):
I think too that this is we could have this
same conversation just about again about women dressing professionally period,
because it started off in the eighties, Yeah, where women
were essentially like, okay, well we could just wear this
slightly more feminine version of the men's uniform. But then
we're like, no, we want to wear what we want
(35:22):
to wear, let's wear skirts, let's accessorize, let's wear our
flouncy bows or not. So I think that this is
probably an issue that a lot of women confront and
probably a big thing for women in college too, of
figuring out how to transition their fashion into the professional world,
(35:42):
whether they are heading toward a law firm or not.
So I'm really curious to hear from our listeners on
this one. Are there any law students or women lawyers
listening to where this really rings a bell and is
this actually problem because that is one thing A lot
(36:02):
of these you know, the memos and these uh these
fashion shows really seem to frame this as something that
far too many female lawyers are violating. That we're just
dressing like we're going to the club. What is this
club also that everyone is apparently always going to. Yeah,
I mean, is it so much an issue of a
(36:24):
large number of women dressing inappropriately or is it just
you know, as we talked about some quote unquote self
described dirty old men, judges jumping to conclusions and judge
women judging jumping to the conclusions. So many so much
judging much judging. Well, because think about it too, I mean,
(36:45):
the role that women play, possibly not only just flutge
shaming behind some lawyers backs, but also doing if they're
a law clerk for a judge, doing the message delivery
to female lawyers to let them know. I mean, on
the one hand, you could say they're doing them a solid,
but on the other hand, they're perpetuating all the stuff
we're talking about too. Yeah, so lawyers, we need a
(37:09):
lawyer up. We'd like to hear from you and other
women who have encountered this too in their professional goings on.
Let us know your thoughts. Mom Stuff at how stuff
works dot com is where you can reach us. You
can also tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast or message
us on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages
to share with you right now. Well, I have a
(37:36):
letter here from Clara in response to our Mama's Boys
and Daddy's Girls series. Uh. She says, my boyfriend of
five years is one of three sons who I believe
make an interesting case study on the developmental effects of
having a closer relationship with a mother versus a father
during formative years. My boyfriend is twenty six, with an
older and younger brother, all about two years apart, as
(37:58):
the boys were entering out lessons there. Then, married parents
decided to move across country to Montana for a career
move for their dad. Soon after the move, my boyfriend's
parents made the decision to divorce, but the result being
that my boyfriend's older brother would stay temporarily with their
dad in Montana, while my boyfriend and his younger brother
moved back to the mid West with their mom. This
temporary fix turned into a year long situation, and the
(38:21):
after effects of this dynamic resonate to this day. Well,
I love all my boyfriend's family. His older brother is
admittedly anxious, socially awkward, and has had continual struggles developing
and maintaining strong relationships with women. Alternatively, my boyfriend and
his younger brother have much more emotionally sensitive demeanors and
are much more socially fluent than their oldest sibling. I've
(38:44):
always just taken this dynamic at face value, but listening
to your podcast really got me thinking about why there
is such a stark contrast in the personalities of three
otherwise incredibly similar brothers. Granted, all behavior is circumstantial, but
I think that building a stronger relationship with their mom
versus their dad, and the formative of years of early
adolescence had a profoundly positive impact on my boyfriend and
(39:04):
his little brother. I love the podcast. You ladies keep
on being fabulous, and you keep on being fabulous. To Clara,
thanks for writing in. Well. I've got a letter here
from Kate and it's in response to an episode it
quite a while back on girls fascinations with horses, and
I loved it so much I had to read it.
(39:25):
So Kate works on a ranch managing a tiny little herd.
She says, I trim hooves, train a baby and a
four year old, and generally keep this nine horse herd
and all around good health. And she talks about the
two kinds of women in the horse world. The one
kind of woman uses horses essentially as a status symbol.
(39:48):
And then she says, there are horse girls like myself
and others I know. We trim our own horses hooves. Doctor,
they're gaping gashes, clean the parts of them. We'd rather
not them until our bus or store or they get
the point of the lesson, whichever comes first. Throw thousands
of pounds of hay in tiny, little and closed barns
choking on random haybits that get lodged in our throats
(40:10):
when the wind kicks up. But most of all, when
we fall, we get back on instead of handing our
horse off for someone else to fix. Girls like myself
have cut our hands with hoof knives, but finish the
job because your horse can't very well walk around on
three trimmed hoofs because of a little blood. Girls like
me get bucked so hard we wear these nasty black
bruises between our thighs for a month because we rode
(40:32):
the buck and refused to stop wearing our pretty skirts.
Girls like me get thrown around over our horses heads,
smack into a light pole upside down, face first, and
still finish the lesson. Girls like me are badass, just
saying it's more than riding a big, pretty animal. It's real,
true blue, unconditional love. If you screw up, they forgive
(40:52):
you without strings. If they screw up, you have to
learn how to forgive them no strings. You have to
learn open communication. If you can't openly communicate, you'll get
hurt badly. And she goes on to say, you learn
what a truly happy human relationship can and should be
when you apply to what you've learned from your horse relationships.
You start learning what trust, honesty, and love feels like
(41:16):
instead of what others make it sound like. So that's
the basis of my fascination with horses for what it's worth.
So thanks so much Kate for that insight, especially with
hoof knives. I didn't know hoof knife existed, So thanks
and anyone else who'd like to write to us Mom
stuff at how stuff works dot com is our email
(41:36):
address and for links to all of our social media
as well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts,
including this one, which has links to all of our
sources that you can read along with us. You can
find it all at stuff Mom Never Told You dot
com For more on this and thousands of other topics,
does it how stuff works dot com Show
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you From how supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, and today we're going to talk about
something that pulls in aspects from our episode on modesty,
(00:23):
things that we've talked about before with women's fashion and
also women working in more male dominated environments, and that
is taking a look at what it's like for women
in law and particularly this aspect of dressing as a
lady lawyer. Yeah, it really seems like women out there
(00:47):
practicing law face a lot of flak that their male
counterparts don't have to. And we got a letter from
a woman named Bonnie who was actually responding to another
listener letter we had read on an episode that addressed
the whole issue of female attorney fashion struggles. And Bonnie
(01:08):
said that, you know, I would love it if you
did a podcast on this topic. And she said, I'm
sure we share a lot of struggles with other professionals
and women working in a typically male environment. Not only
are there the typical struggles like work life balance and
making partner, but there are also things I encountered that
I never imagine would happen. For one, I've been asked
if I was a client, a secretary, or a court
(01:29):
reporter on multiple occasions. It's rarely assumed by default that
you're the lawyer unless you're standing behind the council table
by yourself. One time, a witness actually pointed at me
during a deposition and asked, who's the girl? She says,
Believe it or not, I've even been touched in mildly
inappropriate ways by male attorneys and even a judge. This
wasn't at some cocktail party either. This was during court
(01:50):
conferences where you'd think nothing like that would ever occur.
I knew I would encounter misogyny in my career, that
both these instances were totally unexpected. So Bonnie and to
all of our other listeners out there working in and
around the legal profession, this episode is for you, and
I hope the rest of you guys can also learn
(02:10):
a thing or two about just the weird kind of
double standards that go on in a courtroom. Yeah, because
I have a feeling that this is a lot of
this will be reflective of a lot of women's experiences,
just in terms of that question of how to dress
in a professional manner. So when it comes to court
(02:36):
room fashions, it's always come with specific decorum and rules
for how you should dress. So if we look, for instance,
over to England, the traditional attire for judges is just
one maybe more extreme example. Yeah, it's there's some fabulous,
(02:57):
fabulous fashion rules for seventeenth century judges in England. They
had to wear long robes complete with ermine and taffada
our silk, a full hood with a cow covering their shoulders,
and a cloak, and ladies and gentlemen there were colors.
Their robes were green and summer and violet and winter.
(03:19):
But all of this fabulous fashion just meant that they
startorially fit in with everybody else who was attending the
royal court at the time. For instance, those white powdered
wigs that we associate with this period and with English
lawyers was just what was considered polite to wear out
in society. So it was incorporated into court dress as well,
(03:39):
And in sixteen thirty five we see possibly the first
court dress code, which was the definitive guide for judges
on what to wear in the courtroom. It basically told
them what robes to wear, when and how. Now, once
we get into the mid eighteenth century, rules have changed
just a little bit, so during criminal trials a less
(04:02):
formal version of the robes was used. This would be
a scarlet robe, black scarf and scarlet casting hood, also
known as a tippet or stole. And then in civil
trials some judges had had begun to wear an all
black silk gown and in great tafoda in the mid
eighteenth century was becoming increasingly popular as an alternative to
(04:26):
the pink tafoa used on some robes. So I love this.
I love that there are such like strongly delineated rules
for what these male judges were wearing and how and
when to wear pink and violet purple. Yeah, exactly. And
there are so many more fashion dues and down'ts for
(04:49):
these male judges that we could get into, but you know,
we have a share to run, so if we move
over to America. This is coming from an essay written
by former Supreme Court Justice Standard O'Connor, who's providing us
historical insights about this side of the pond, and she
talks about how those colorful rogue traditions and ornate wigs
they never really took off here and The theory is
(05:12):
that Thomas Jefferson himself opposed the unnecessary pomp and quote
needless official apparel, especially the monstrous wig which makes the
English judges look like rats peeping through bushes of oakum.
And I had no idea what oakum meant. Apparently it's
a loose fiber from untangled rope that was especially used
for cocking wooden ships. So there you go, and something
(05:33):
that apparently you just don't want to look like. It's
a sick burn from Jefferson. Yeah, he was always dropping
those those sick oakum burns um. But she talks about
O'Connor does about the portrait of the first Chief Justice,
John j that shows him wearing a black and red
robe with white boarders. But by eighteen o one, when
(05:55):
John Marshall became Chief Justice, it was all black for
the justices. But that's all tradition. There are no written
rules about what judges must wear, which I thought was
really interesting, although there have been a couple exceptions. For instance,
O'Connor talks about how she began wearing a white collar,
(06:16):
which sort of stepped out of via all black unspoken rules.
But more significantly, former Chief Justice rhyan Quist had gold
bands sewn onto his robe after he saw it in
an opera that I believe like involved a judge figure,
(06:36):
and he liked it so much he had it sewn
on to his I mean, and you know, if you're
going to be chief justice, why not add a little flair.
I imagine that's striking. My father is a former pilot,
and so he had the gold bands on his black
uniform as well well. And we've talked to about how
Ruth Bader Ginsburg has her special jabbows that she wears
(06:59):
for different occasion. But men don't wear those fancy collars,
and we are definitely here to talk about those gender divisions.
That's right, Caroline. Things aren't so black and white though,
when it comes to people appearing before judges, especially women.
And this is coming from a gallery over at the
Cut with New York Magazine from and they wrote, historically,
(07:23):
the courtroom wardrobes of high profile people have carried meaning
as well. Right, So if we go back in time,
and I meant this might seem like a very strange
jump all of a sudden, but if we go back
to Joan of arc, so she had a ton of
trials because you know, she was accused of being a
heretic for hearing voices, so at the end of one
of her many trials, she promised, Hey, I am gonna
(07:47):
stop hearing the voices you guys, and just to throw
in there something extra, I'm also gonna stop wearing male clothing.
Of course, she started wearing it again while she was
in prison, possibly to avoid sexual assault, and she claimed
that it was more lawful and convenient. Shortly thereafter, Joan
was judged to be a relapsed heretic and was executed.
(08:08):
And so as you can tell, we're definitely getting into
what your clothes say about you when you appear in
the courtroom. Well, clearly Marie Antoinette thought a lot about that,
because during her imprisonment she wore a black morning gown
for six months straight and defiance of a ban on black,
which at that time symbolized sympathy for the monarchy. And
(08:31):
when she was later tried on an array of charges,
including a vindictive glance yikes France, wow that rhymed, she
came to the courtroom in a tattered dress, which caused
one guard to note quote her long black dress rendered
her extraordinary pallor all the more striking and clearly she
(08:51):
was trying to in gender sympathy. Um, but of course
that didn't really work because she was executed. But for
her execution, she wore a pristine white dress. Yeah, and
she accessed or ezes to match. This lady knew what
she was doing. I mean, it didn't work, it kind
of backfired, but she looked fabulous. And then if we
(09:13):
jump forward to uh, modern times, we have to point
out Martha Stewart, who was roundly criticized for wearing clothes
that drew attention to her wealth, things like fancy first dolls,
broken bags. People were basically saying, like, what are you
doing flaunting how much money you have? Rich lady? Martha's
being Martha and Martha will always do Martha. Martha's you
(09:35):
and Martha. But that brings us to today. What about
we talked about women in front of the court bench.
What about the lawyers, the people responsible for pleading their
clients cases. Obviously, male or female lawyers are expected to
dress professionally in court because you want to be taken
(09:56):
seriously and yet not distracting or give the jury the
wrong impression because you're representing your clients. Yeah, but the
whole thing is that nobody needs to be a jerk
about it. And preparing for this episode, I was so
taken aback at how shamey people could be, specifically women,
(10:18):
let alone men when it comes to advising women attorneys
how to dress, and how contradictory so much of that
advice is. Yeah, it's never really been easy for women
lawyers to dress themselves for court because for men, they
have a uniform, it's a suit and a tie, whereas
women have more options perhaps, but they're kind of penalized
(10:42):
no matter what, because and I've found this surprising, you
wear a pant suit and you're considered too masculine, but
sometimes if you wear the wrong skirt and heels, you're
considered too feminine. And when this conversation really started getting
off the ground in the nineteen seventies and eighties, women
try to play it safe by adopting male style. So
(11:04):
we would wear skirt suits with ham's below the kneecap
and button down shirts and even these floppy bow ties
because we needed ties to apparently, but we would often
accessorize with pearls or ruffles to have as Uh and
Farmer writing for the American Bar Association's Perspectives magazine to
(11:25):
have feminine apologetic disclaimers, which actually is a term coined
by sociologist Jan Felsion. So we would be kind of
emulating men in the basic styles, but also offering those
touches to say, oh, still a woman here and don't worry, right,
I mean, that's totally a fine line that women were
(11:45):
walking and they were emulating men, because who else were
they going to emulate? You know? There. It wasn't like
in the eighties and even now there were a ton
of women in higher up legal positions. Uh, it definitely
is and was a male dominated fashion. And so Farmer
points out that in the eighties women finally did find
an ounce of inspiration in the form of l a
(12:08):
law character Grace van Owen, who wore silk V neck blouses,
and she talked to a Farmer, talked to a judge
who is discussing how women in the eighties just like
ran out and everybody had this silk V neck blouse
because like, well they did it with her on TV
and it looks nice. You didn't have to have rock
the floppy floppy bow tie anymore. So, working girl, although
(12:32):
I mean, I like a floppy bow tie every now
and then. I'll admit it, um. But even today, things
have not gotten any easier since the eighties for women
in law school and practicing law. For instance, in two
thousand nine, at a Seventh Circuit Bar Association meeting, a
panel of judges and lawyers complained about women's attire. We
(12:54):
have Chief Judge Michael P. Mccuski of the U. S.
District Court for the Central District of Illinois. How does
he fit all that? On a business card? He said
that he'd observed female participants at moot court competitions in
law school wearing quote, skirts so short there's no way
they can sit down, and blouses so short there's no
(13:17):
way the judges wouldn't look. Because you know, we've mentioned that. Yeah,
there're if you were female lawyers practicing a lot of times,
but by far, if you're standing before a judge, you
have a really good chance and even better chance that
he is a man. Right. And I think that quote
sums up attitudes about women and their attire so well,
(13:39):
because so the first part, the skirts so short, there's
no way that they can sit down. That's like a blaming,
blaming the woman who's wearing the attire and then bloustes
so short, there's no way the judges wouldn't look. That's
admitting that there's a bunch of pervy old men sitting
in the courtroom. But in response to this, judge A.
Benjamin Goldger of the U. S. Bankruptcy Court for the
(14:01):
Northern District of Illinois said that women lawyers dressing too
sexually is quote a huge problem. You don't dress in
court as if it's Saturday night and you're going out
to a party. Yeah, I mean the true you want
to dress professionally, but let's not single out women. Okay,
And he didn't he he was actually equally unhappy with
(14:24):
men wearing loud graphic ties. But this is not where
this kind of fashion scrutiny stops, because I mean, I
don't know if you guys knew it, but judges are
apparently closet fashion. He says similarly in two thousand ten,
although this wasn't so judge heavy. Nonetheless, the Chicago Bar
(14:44):
Association's Young Lawyers section held a What Not to Wear
fashion show that brought judges, law professors, and law students
altogether to critique mostly female courtroom fashions on a runway UM,
which very fact that that happened attracted a lot of
media attention. I feel like almost every article that we
(15:06):
read on this topic, Caroline highlighted this, this Chicago Barrow
Association meeting. Well, yeah, because I think there wasn't like,
you know, media coverage so to speak, of this event.
But there were there were two bloggers in particular who
were present, and one was like, yeah, you tell them,
and the other one was like seriously, So she she
(15:28):
laid out the roles as she had interpreted them, which
was basically like there's nothing that you can wear and
get away with, like you're darned if you do, darned
if you don't. Well, and it probably also ties in
two things that we've talked about, particularly in the modesty
episode on not only is there that fine line, but
it probably gets even finer depending on your body type.
(15:50):
All sorts of factors going into that um. In June, though,
it's worth noting that in Tennessee Circuit Judge Royce Taylor
got so fed up with complaints from other attorneys about
courtroom dress, particularly among women, that he said a dress
code in his courtroom for female attorneys, and we will
(16:11):
say that he also found a male attorney in contempt
for not wearing a blazer. But his reason for this
was that your personal appearance in court is a reflection
upon the entire legal profession. Okay, totally valid um. And
Nashville attorney Carla Miller's response to this was definitely on
Taylor's side. She said that some ladies are dressing in
(16:34):
a manner that should be bothersome to other lady lawyers
who strive to be professional. And she breaks it down, y'all,
Carla gets Carla gets serious. She says, here's the thing.
We girls, we like making fashion statements. It's about individualism.
Maybe the courtroom is not a place to show your
individualism via fashion. Now I'm just assuming that Miller is
(16:58):
also from Tennessee, and so I affected the Tennessee accent perfect,
and you know, all of these things they have points
to them as far as dressing professionally. But and I'm
going to keep saying that, but I'm also going to
keep saying that it's it's just kind of icky though
when it comes to the focus on women. But all
(17:22):
of this extends this, these expectations, these rules, they all
extend back to before you're even in the courtroom, when
you're just a law student. In March, Loyola Law School
sent a memo to students about appropriate behavior for their
externships that included a special note for women, which said,
(17:43):
I really don't need to mention that cleavage and stiletto
heels are not appropriate office where outside of ridiculous lawyer
TV shows do I Yet I'm getting complaints from supervisors
and it's important to note, uh that there were no
ash and guidelines in this memo for men, and I
think you know the content of that message is bad enough.
(18:06):
Do you really need to be snarky? I feel like
there was that was snark laden. Well, all of these
are just various examples of how there really isn't an
established way for women to dress because it's going to
vary from judge to judge. Because going into this episode,
I assumed that, Okay, the proper and safest way for
(18:31):
a female lawyer to dress in front of a judge
is to just wear a pant suit. Yeah. I would
have assumed that as well, you wear a modest button
down blazer pant suit. Done, But no, because they're also
judges who do not like pant suits on women because
they find them too masculinizing. And in fact, this kind
of blew my mind. A lot of law clerks will
(18:54):
get word out to female attorneys before a case start,
before a trial starts, to let them know how judges
prefer that they dressed, not in the gross sense of
the term, but in terms of courtroom decorum. But I
had no idea that courtroom decorum would be that specific
(19:15):
to how women dress. I mean, this does also apply
to some men. I mean, we've mentioned the guy who
held a male attorney in contemptive court for not wearing
a blazer for instance. However it's still I mean for men, yeah,
wear a pant suit and you'll be safe, but not
so much for women. Right, It's very strange that there's
no advice to men out there to hey, kind of
(19:37):
kind of feel out the courtroom environment and see what
is safe for you to wear. But that's the bulk
of advice to women attorneys. And Anna Akbari is a
New York University professor who tells herself as a sociologist, entrepreneur,
and the thinking person stylist, had a lot to say
for women attorneys about how to dress. She says, if
(19:59):
you're going to wear a suit, a skirt suit registers
better than a pant suit. In male dominated fields like law,
skirts and dresses are particularly rewarded as they are more
appealing to men. In interview situations, in particular, women should
always wear a skirt or dress as it is heavily
favored over pants by interviewers, many of whom are men.
(20:20):
And at this point, I flipped my laptop over destroyed
that it caught on fire, and I've since bought a
new one. Uh, that was my response to Akbari. Well,
and if you do toss on a skirt or a
dress and heels, there are even further rules for that
of well, what's the proper length, what about the bus line?
How much arm can I show? How much color can
(20:43):
I wear? There are even rules about how Um, women
lawyers want to should avoid wearing high heels with red
souls because that will draw too much attention, or avoid
wearing too bright of colors, never wear pink. All these
things be feminine, but not too feminine. Um. But going
to Akbari's previsent point of how a little more feminine
(21:09):
sexy attire is appreciated. Judge Richard Copp caught a lot
of flak in March on his blog when I Forget,
I don't remember what this was in response to, but
he wrote a post about how there was he think
God left her anonymous a quote very pretty female lawyer
(21:30):
um in her late twenties, who's brilliant, but also tends
to where as he calls it very short skirts and
shows lots of her ample chest, and how he especially
appreciates the last two attributes and those are direct quotes,
and he goes on to talk about how female law
clerks sneered at this woman behind her back and called
(21:53):
her unprofessional and did directly like get slut shamy with
her for this. And so his conclude susion for women
lawyers in considering how to dress is well, you can't win.
Quote men are both pigs and prudes. Get over it.
So that um, women listening, if you're in law school,
(22:16):
what a challenge? What a challenge? Yeah, And a lot
of the flak that he received was not only for
just being gross, because he admits in that blog post
that he's a dirty old man, which is he's probably
he he would say if he were sitting in this
studio right now, he would say that was clearly a joke. No. Well,
(22:37):
in his response he did post response, he apologized for it,
and he basically said that he tried and failed to
use edgy humor. And as someone who enjoys reading and writing,
I say that humor is very tricky. You're right, just
(22:57):
try not to use it. If you're not very good
at it. Maybe stay to your day job judge. Oh yeah, hey,
well I know, yeah, stick to being a judge. And
a lot of people responded to his really gross blog
by saying, um, this is embarrassing for you and for
me for the fact that you're a judge. So the
question though, is why why are there Why why does
(23:18):
this tight rope even exist? Um? So they are all
sorts of theories as to why this happens. Of course,
we could circle around to evolutionary biology. Um. There was
a study published in the journal Aggressive Behavior in two
thousand eleven called the Intolerance of Sexy Peers, and it
(23:41):
really focuses on women being judgmental toward how other women dress,
such as the case of those women law clerks throwing
shade at the lady lawyer. Um. The study would say
that this was really these women, these law clerks, acting
in a sexually protective manner, or I should say a
(24:03):
sexually self protective manner, because the idea, according to this study,
is that women get judge against other women who we
think are dressing too provocatively because we consider them a
sexual threat. Although I really doubt that that's happening in
a courtroom. Yeah, well, you know, people probably tend not
(24:24):
to bring their boyfriends or husbands to the courtroom, and
so they probably don't have to be worried about anyone
getting stolen because a lady lawyer is wearing a blouse.
If you have two single ladies listening, if you're looking
to meet a man, sign up for Jerry Duty I
s I p um so. Another theory, another conversation that's
(24:44):
happening about why there are so many perceived or anecdotal
problems with what women attorneys are wearing has to do
with this need to control women. And this is coming
from Valerie LaRue. She was writing in Miss j D
in June, and she says that it's not just men.
Women will do the policing of other women for men.
(25:09):
And she says that basically, you know, our culture still
judges women, even the most powerful women like Hillary Clinton,
by a completely different standard, one inferior to men. And
she goes on to give other nonclothing examples, but it's
basically that idea of you know, where are all the
rules for men, like, yes, wear a suit, wear a
nice tie, don't be too flashy, all that stuff. But
(25:29):
why why there's so many there's so many websites out
there and blogs and whatever dedicated to telling women what
to wear and how they're failing and looking skanky or whatever.
Don't let your tramp stamp show was part of that
Chicago fashion show. Um, And it's part of this whole
thing of like, oh, well, we're nervous maybe subconsciously about
women being in such a male dominated field. Well, and
(25:52):
Jill Philipovic, who is a litigator turned journalist who focuses
a lot on sexism and feminism, has said that it
quote gives sexist men and women because remember, this is
not just something perpetuated by men, Women are also doing
this to women. It gives sexist men and women the
(26:13):
ability to discriminate both in hiring and giving projects to
brand female attorneys based on appropriateness, which too often correlates
to perceived social class, of which race also factors in,
and to body type. I mean, all of this just
traces back to policing women's bodies, and also this whole
(26:35):
thing of law in particular being very much a male domain.
I mean, at the top of the podcast, when we
were talking about judges fashions, it was exclusive to men
because they were the only judges there. And only now
are we even starting to see more of uh something
akin to gender parity in the courtroom. Yeah, and we're
(26:57):
going to talk more about this gender divide with fashion.
We come right back from a quick break. So when
we left off, I had mentioned that at the top
of the podcast we were talking about those British judges
that it was all men. Um. There was a source
that we found talking about how today in Britain, their
(27:21):
court room decorum of wearing the robes and wigs might
seem sillier old fashioned, but it's a lot easier to
follow than these rules stateside, because quote, at least you
can wear basically anything you want under the rope and
still look just like your male colleagues. No one would
(27:43):
mistake you, as in the case of the stuff. I've
never told you listener we heard from no one would
mistake you for a core reporter or paralegal. Yeah, so
those rules, those dress codes that involve wearing robes could
actually be pretty pretty beneficial. It's specially in a male
dominated courtroom or if just hanging out in your house
(28:04):
robes for all. Anyone who keeps up with celebrity news
lately would probably know what we're talking about. If you're
not already, you know, living in England would be really
familiar with this whole wig thing because the woman that
George Clooney just married, who is a lawyer in England,
had barristaff she is. She had her picture circulating in
(28:24):
the media with her tiny little white wig on. Ah. Yeah,
so it's it's a thing and women do it too,
and it you know, it's it's got to make things easier.
It has to one with things. I mean, yeah, well,
never mind how to solve sexism in the courtroom. Wigs
and robes done end of podcasts perfect well, So part
of this whole issue. You know, we've talked about the
(28:45):
male dominated stuff a bunch and the fact that women
lack role models, and Amanda has talked about this over
it's slate talking about how many law firms still lack
female partners who can kind of show the rookies how
it's done. She says that only four of the top
two hundred law firms in the US have female managing partners,
(29:06):
and so following the advice on the website Corporate run
by attorney Cat Griffin can really prove to be a bummer,
because Griffin's advice is to play it safe, ladies, until
you see a senior lawyer do it. But the whole
problem is that statistically, there just aren't a whole lot
of women partners and judges out there to look to
(29:28):
for your fashion guidelines. However, there are plenty of women
in law school. Um, I mean, if we just look
at law firms, it's kind of astounding to compare those
statistics to statistics of the numbers of women in law school,
because it's fairly equal. There are just slightly fewer women
pursuing their j d s in the US as there
(29:50):
are men. Um And these stats are coming from a
Catalyst report from and it talked about how law firms
in particular might not have as many women among their
ranks because they're very much set up around a male
model because they don't have family friendly environments. I mean,
(30:11):
law is notorious for its long hours, particularly if you're
in a private practice where billable hours rule the day,
and so you make your money and get the attention
by putting in those long days. It's a lot of
tedious work. If a client calls, you have to, you know,
be able to pick up and respond. And it talks
(30:34):
about how motherhood stirs up a benevolent paternalism as well,
and so it creates a drain because even though there
are lots of women in law school, they start to
siphon off the higher up you climb, right, and so
Deborah Epstein Henry who's who's an author and former lawyer,
talks about what we need to kind of help with this,
(30:55):
both in the what do I wear arena as well
as in the how do I Progress in my career arena.
She says that until you have representation of women on
influential committees and boards a critical mass. She says, women
are not comfortable voicing their opinions. And this also applies
to taking chances and all sorts of things, all the
(31:16):
way down to what they wear in court. And so
let's take a deeper dive into some of the numbers.
So as opposed to the just over forty seven percent
of women who make up j D students just in
the United States, according to the American Bar Association, women
as of make up only thirty three percent of the
legal profession. And if you look just at lawyers, you
(31:40):
also see the pipeline start to thin. So when it
comes to summer associates probably rush out of law school,
forty seven point seven percent of them are women, and
then forty percent or associate our associates excuse me, and
then are full blown lawyers. But of course when we
(32:02):
move from being a lawyer to being a partner, even
fewer women in there. That's right. In two eleven, women
made up just nineteen point five percent of partners, and
eleven percent of the largest US law firms had no
women on their governing committees. Women did appear, however, to
be more successful in single tier firms, where promotion rates
(32:26):
for them as equity partners was strongest. And basically, an
equity partner is a part owner of the business. But
one little fact about women equity partners and law firms,
They do, on average make about eighty six percent of
what their male equity partners make, So the wage gap
(32:48):
still exists even at that top tier. Moving out of
law firms though, and looking at general councils at Fortune
five hundred companies, women comprise about eighteen point eight percent
of those lawyers. And I just mentioned a wage gap. Yes,
in fact, it exists for lawyers as well. Women lawyers
are making about twenty percent less than male lawyers as
(33:11):
of two thousand twelve, and so in terms of numbers
for lawyers, it's even worse for women of color. Women
of color makeup just eleven percent of associates, two percent
of partners, and there are only fifteen general councils who
are women of color in Fortune five companies. And if
we bring it full circle and get back to talking
(33:32):
about judges and look at the courts. In twenty three
of all federal judge ships were held by women, and
just of state judgeships were held by women. So I
do wonder, then, what whether this conversation would be happening
at least as much if there were more women behind
(33:52):
the bench, Because regardless of what the gender makeup is
in a courtroom, there will still and always be rules
of decorum, as I think there should be. But it
seems like something needs to happen in terms of making
these fashion rules not so much a part of the
(34:15):
daily grind of being a woman lawyer, because shouldn't they
be focusing more of their attention and concerns on, oh,
I don't know, the actual law in cases. It seems
like a lot of energy is possibly being diverted into
these other kinds of things. Yeah, as my therapist would say, interesting,
you're you're showing a lot of energy around this topic.
(34:36):
I wonder why that is, And I do think that
a lot of it has to do with there is
still even after all of this time, there is still
so much like shaming going on, like making almost trying
to make women feel unwelcome in the courtroom and so
putting the focus on their appearance rather than their actual deeds. Well,
(35:00):
I think too that this is we could have this
same conversation just about again about women dressing professionally period,
because it started off in the eighties, Yeah, where women
were essentially like, okay, well we could just wear this
slightly more feminine version of the men's uniform. But then
we're like, no, we want to wear what we want
(35:22):
to wear, let's wear skirts, let's accessorize, let's wear our
flouncy bows or not. So I think that this is
probably an issue that a lot of women confront and
probably a big thing for women in college too, of
figuring out how to transition their fashion into the professional world,
(35:42):
whether they are heading toward a law firm or not.
So I'm really curious to hear from our listeners on
this one. Are there any law students or women lawyers
listening to where this really rings a bell and is
this actually problem because that is one thing A lot
(36:02):
of these you know, the memos and these uh these
fashion shows really seem to frame this as something that
far too many female lawyers are violating. That we're just
dressing like we're going to the club. What is this
club also that everyone is apparently always going to. Yeah,
I mean, is it so much an issue of a
(36:24):
large number of women dressing inappropriately or is it just
you know, as we talked about some quote unquote self
described dirty old men, judges jumping to conclusions and judge
women judging jumping to the conclusions. So many so much
judging much judging. Well, because think about it too, I mean,
(36:45):
the role that women play, possibly not only just flutge
shaming behind some lawyers backs, but also doing if they're
a law clerk for a judge, doing the message delivery
to female lawyers to let them know. I mean, on
the one hand, you could say they're doing them a solid,
but on the other hand, they're perpetuating all the stuff
we're talking about too. Yeah, so lawyers, we need a
(37:09):
lawyer up. We'd like to hear from you and other
women who have encountered this too in their professional goings on.
Let us know your thoughts. Mom Stuff at how stuff
works dot com is where you can reach us. You
can also tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast or message
us on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages
to share with you right now. Well, I have a
(37:36):
letter here from Clara in response to our Mama's Boys
and Daddy's Girls series. Uh. She says, my boyfriend of
five years is one of three sons who I believe
make an interesting case study on the developmental effects of
having a closer relationship with a mother versus a father
during formative years. My boyfriend is twenty six, with an
older and younger brother, all about two years apart, as
(37:58):
the boys were entering out lessons there. Then, married parents
decided to move across country to Montana for a career
move for their dad. Soon after the move, my boyfriend's
parents made the decision to divorce, but the result being
that my boyfriend's older brother would stay temporarily with their
dad in Montana, while my boyfriend and his younger brother
moved back to the mid West with their mom. This
temporary fix turned into a year long situation, and the
(38:21):
after effects of this dynamic resonate to this day. Well,
I love all my boyfriend's family. His older brother is
admittedly anxious, socially awkward, and has had continual struggles developing
and maintaining strong relationships with women. Alternatively, my boyfriend and
his younger brother have much more emotionally sensitive demeanors and
are much more socially fluent than their oldest sibling. I've
(38:44):
always just taken this dynamic at face value, but listening
to your podcast really got me thinking about why there
is such a stark contrast in the personalities of three
otherwise incredibly similar brothers. Granted, all behavior is circumstantial, but
I think that building a stronger relationship with their mom
versus their dad, and the formative of years of early
adolescence had a profoundly positive impact on my boyfriend and
(39:04):
his little brother. I love the podcast. You ladies keep
on being fabulous, and you keep on being fabulous. To Clara,
thanks for writing in. Well. I've got a letter here
from Kate and it's in response to an episode it
quite a while back on girls fascinations with horses, and
I loved it so much I had to read it.
(39:25):
So Kate works on a ranch managing a tiny little herd.
She says, I trim hooves, train a baby and a
four year old, and generally keep this nine horse herd
and all around good health. And she talks about the
two kinds of women in the horse world. The one
kind of woman uses horses essentially as a status symbol.
(39:48):
And then she says, there are horse girls like myself
and others I know. We trim our own horses hooves. Doctor,
they're gaping gashes, clean the parts of them. We'd rather
not them until our bus or store or they get
the point of the lesson, whichever comes first. Throw thousands
of pounds of hay in tiny, little and closed barns
choking on random haybits that get lodged in our throats
(40:10):
when the wind kicks up. But most of all, when
we fall, we get back on instead of handing our
horse off for someone else to fix. Girls like myself
have cut our hands with hoof knives, but finish the
job because your horse can't very well walk around on
three trimmed hoofs because of a little blood. Girls like
me get bucked so hard we wear these nasty black
bruises between our thighs for a month because we rode
(40:32):
the buck and refused to stop wearing our pretty skirts.
Girls like me get thrown around over our horses heads,
smack into a light pole upside down, face first, and
still finish the lesson. Girls like me are badass, just
saying it's more than riding a big, pretty animal. It's real,
true blue, unconditional love. If you screw up, they forgive
(40:52):
you without strings. If they screw up, you have to
learn how to forgive them no strings. You have to
learn open communication. If you can't openly communicate, you'll get
hurt badly. And she goes on to say, you learn
what a truly happy human relationship can and should be
when you apply to what you've learned from your horse relationships.
You start learning what trust, honesty, and love feels like
(41:16):
instead of what others make it sound like. So that's
the basis of my fascination with horses for what it's worth.
So thanks so much Kate for that insight, especially with
hoof knives. I didn't know hoof knife existed, So thanks
and anyone else who'd like to write to us Mom
stuff at how stuff works dot com is our email
(41:36):
address and for links to all of our social media
as well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts,
including this one, which has links to all of our
sources that you can read along with us. You can
find it all at stuff Mom Never Told You dot
com For more on this and thousands of other topics,
does it how stuff works dot com Show
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. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!