Implicit Gender Biases

Levinson and Young (2010) studied the implicit gender bias in the legal profession with an empirical study. The studied whether law students (N=55) hold implicit gender biases related to women in the legal profession. They also tested whether the implicit biases predict discriminatory decision-making. They did this by giving an IAT as well as a non-implicit measures. They found that implicit bias was prevalent among those surveyed. Both men and women in law school associated women with home and family, while associating men with judgeship. They believe the best way to fix the inequality is to understand it as fully as possible. This study did well in determining if there were a bias within law school students, but they only surveyed students

Studies show that many women tend to concentrate in family law and that women lawyers are more likely to represent women clients. Many places around the world are experiencing transformation into a modern version their law practices. Women must balance work and family, so organizations including government, corporations, and large law firms, developed policies designed to facilitate work-family balance (Part time scheduling, job sharing, and flexible scheduling). When hard economic times occur, firms are more likely to abandon this practice. 60 percent of Staff and contract attorneys are women which makes it the job title that includes the highest concentration of women. It is found that having children is a positive factor for males, but a positive/negative factor for females. There is a higher change of women leaving work for their children than it is for men. This invokes more questions that have yet to be answers such as: How are lawyers treated when they return from leaves—how does it effect their pay? Their possibility for partnership? How are decisions about exit made? The article fails to answer these

The number of women in the legal profession has gown immensely over the last few decades, but has their representation among law firm partnerships? This study says no, it is actually very low. The study shows that there are gender differences in leaving private practice. Data from this study cam from a survey of randomly selected of lawyers that were stratified by gender to include equal numbers of men and women that were called to the Ontario bar between 1900 and 2009. This gap was to provide different stages of careers. Questionaries’ were mailed directly to respondents’ places of employment (N=1,270). The conclusion of this study is that gender equality in the legal profession has not yet been fully achieved, and the progress that has been made is threatened by the continued “exodus” of women from private law practice. They were all less likely to leave if they were involved in more important responsibilities. This study doesn’t include what happens when women take maternal leave and the effects it could have on whether a woman takes partnership or does numerous other things. The article even mentions that in future studies it should be