Study: Where Have all The Women Lawyers Gone?
9th November 2010
The Wall Street Journal succumbs to the Identity Politics Error.
Despite more diversity initiatives, as well as maternity-leave and part-time policies that are generally viewed as female-friendly, women remain dramatically underrepresented in law firms leadership ranks, according to a new study from the National Association of Women Lawyers.
The key shell-game-word here is ‘underrepresented’. Using the term ‘underrepresented’ assumes (without attempting to prove) that women are somehow entitled to some sort of ‘representation’ within the legal field — presumably a proportion matching the number of women in the population as a whole, or in the college-educated population, or some other arbitrary percentage — and that if reality doesn’t match that ideal number, there is Something Nefarious Afoot.
The truth is that the mix of people in a particular profession IS NOT A REPRESENTATIVE FUNCTION; there is no ‘one person one vote’ rule in how people go about making their livings. It’s as irrelevant as whether or not you have as many dollar bills in your wallet as other people in your ‘group’, however that ‘group’ may be defined. The two are not connected, and are determined by nothing more than your preference for carrying around dollar bills, or pure chance.
The Identity Politics Nanny Brigade have succeeded in getting this ‘underrepresented’ meme in circulation so well that even so presumably-well-educated a person as Vanessa O’Connell (and who the hell is Vanessa O’Connell?) is snookered by it. The depth of this corruption is her reference later on in the article to this ‘underrepresentation’ as ‘inequity’, as if it’s somehow unfair on the part of Somebody (who, exactly?) that this ‘underrepresentation’ exists.