Like most women, I have long bought into the idea that women are horrible to each other at work. Even though that hadn’t personally been my experience (but for a few rare exceptions), I heard it often enough to believe it was true, albeit incredibly unfortunate.
A recent report by the Dallas Women Lawyers Association illustrates two very important points:
1) the legal profession has a long way to go to reach anything close to gender parity, and;
2) it is incumbent on women lawyers to help close the gap, both by advocating for systemic changes in the profession and by engaging in the kind of strategic self-promotion that can position them to make those changes happen.
The DWLA report, Bridging the Gap: Practical Resources and Suggestions for Promoting and Retaining Female Attorneys in the Legal Profession, is a concise rundown of the challenges women lawyers face and how to address them.
A little less than a year ago, The Washington Post made a splash with an article about how the women in the Obama White House were helping raise each other’s professional profiles using a tool called amplification.
I recently visited with Andrea S. Kramer, co-author of Breaking Through Bias: Communication Techniques for Women to Succeed at Work (along with her husband, Alton B. Harris) and a longtime partner at McDermott Will & Emery LLP. She’s an expert on issues affecting women in the legal profession, so I asked her about challenges women lawyers face when developing business.
In the almost three decades I’ve been writing about or for lawyers, I have learned that women lawyers are every bit as good as their male counterparts – except when it comes to tooting their own horns.
