Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make Partner ... Or History

Those numbers are out there again: The low percentage of female attorneys as plain-vanilla partners [27%] and the equity kind [16%].  Seemingly with the same frustrated tone of Sigmund Freud asking - What do women want - Carolyn Elefant asks - "Why ... haven't women advanced?"

Shoot me.  But my answer to this, whatever the profession, has always been that women won't or can't play the game well enough.  We women, and I unachieved until I was 58 years old, tend to be social conformists.  We pick up on professional, organizational and even community norms and comply. End of story. 

In her 2007 book "Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History," historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich posits that from the 1400s to the present, women who got ahead professionally understood what norms they needed to veer from - and how.  In law, I see Jones Day's Managing Partner in Pittsburgh Laura Ellsworth as carrying that strategy off brilliantly.  In politics, it's Sarah Palin.  In media, it's Arianna Huffington.  

Someone seems to tell males early in their lives that they have to sort out what rules they can and must break and in what manner.  Unless that's done as a complete package they will wind up in prison or bankrupt. It's opined that one reason media tycoon Rupert Murdoch can take giant risks, fail sometimes and keep winning at higher stakes is that at Oxford he was immersed in game theory.  That cognitive sport was the rage then.  One of its tenets was figuring out, sooner and better than others, what norms should be ignored, bypassed, or boldly broken from.  

Should women learn formal game theory? That could help.  A digestible primer is "Game Theory: A Very Short Introduction" by Ken Binmore. 

In addition, we should encourage ourselves and each other not to give up before the miracle - or penetrating the very big time.  Usually we are so earnest about our professional pursuits that we allow ourselves to become worn out at midlevel, including achievement.  What about if when we hit midlevel we consider ourselves just hitting our stride. 

Instead of all work, we can allot the energy to analyzing how the game is played by stars who sustain performance.  They can be street hustlers or the Chief Executive Officer of a professional services firm. That's what I did when I was 58.  For me what had to be decoded about the game were the soft areas like persona, emotional intelligence, and building and embracing personal strength and power.  Here is a [free] e-book on what I learned Download CUsersjasneDocumentsjg.pdf.

The third factor might be to assess and accept the price of success.  It's high.  Part of being very successful is the ability to not allow the pricetag to show.  In his provocative 2000 book "The Future of Success," economist Robert B. Reich brought that dirty little detail out of the closet.  He didn't mince words: Those who succeed, and there aren't many of them, can't live balanced lives.  Providing the illusion of such might be required, though, as protective coloring.  Through my own march towards making a name for myself as a writer, especially online, I had to come to think of companionship and a sense of community as overrated.

The good news is that we are living longer.  At any age we can decide to play the game in ways that will differentiate us as stars.  Even if organizations are pushing out their older workers we can always start our own businesses.  Actually, we females seem to thrive in space we create.

Comments

[Curies]

Let's not forget that society as a whole still tends to be tougher on women caught breaking the rules, another part of the double standard. It's arguable whether Martha Stewart did anything so conspicuous or was punished to some degree for being uppity. The next time a woman is chastised, answer with "girls will be girls" and watch the faces change. We're all taught to accept a greater degree of bad behavior of all kinds from males and this will take at least another generation to work through. I spend time with mothers who decry men using them up and treating them badly, and watch them allowing their sons to curse at them and speak to them as if they were talking to a hired housekeeper who takes orders! Women unconsciously groom sons to be industry titans while encouraging daughters to be low self-esteem doormats like themselves.

[mj]

A few comments:

1) Many women of gens X and Y did grow up playing sports. I am a DI athlete who never finished less than third in the nation with my team. I think the knocks one takes in team sports are terribly important to understanding the workplace.

2) It's probably pretty easy to consider oneself successful at the ripe old age of 58. Try figuring it out in your twenties when you are buried under the burden of biglaw responsibilities

3) I have a business/economics background, and I can say that with the exception of negotiations, using game theory, no matter how rudimentary or advanced, is not the best way to live one's life.

I wholeheartedly agree with the earlier poster who said that men figure out where to focus their energy and what to ignore to get ahead. The innate nature of women to be polite and dutiful makes is difficult for women to process decisions in that manner.

Provocative post though!

[HCB]

"Through my own march towards making a name for myself as a writer,"

It's interesting that you don't say what that name is. Look up myopic narcissist.

Also, at the beginning of the sentence, you probably meant to say "During the course of" rather than "through." I could explain the difference but it might help more if you figured it out for yourself.

[Not a Player]

You say women need to break out of our tendency to be social conformists... but what you're proposing here is PRECISELY another version of social conformity. You're suggesting that we throw up our hands and say, "that's it. The boys have it figured out. The only way to be successful is to play the game their way."

Well, that's certainly one way to do it. But how about being TRULY revolutionary and changing the rules? What you're advocating is neither original nor helpful. It does no one any good to simply be satisfied with a process whereby success is measured by how inhuman you become. How about questioning the way things are done, instead of simply accepting that "that's how it is"? Talk about conformity.

[Holdfast]

Mt wife is way more intelligent than I am, yet I did much better at law school because I was better at grasping what to study and what to ignore, and I was willing to gamble a bit and place the emphasis where I thought it would help most. My wife dutifully studied the material as laid out, and got perfectly acceptable grades - she rarely got bad marks, but she could not get the big scores either. For me it was a matter of understanding the rules and then deciding which ones I could afford to break.

Another anecdotal notion - I find that when women break the rules, they often act like they didn't know they were doing it or they keep themselves ignorant of the exact rules so they can pretend that they did not know they were breaking them, whereas guys will generally follow most rules quite carefully, until they decide that it is time to break them, and they will then do so with eyes fully open, conciously accepting the risk.

[Rightsized]

I agree that women who want leadership roles have some work to do, but I also think that all those years of being sidelined has caused a lot of women the opportunity to develop outside interests and an inner life, something that the same social pressures that condition men to believe that such things are unacceptable, unmanly, etc. I am a female attorney who doesn't plan on leaving the law early to pop out a few WASP babies before I'm forty, but I also don't want to be a big firm partner or have any other position that will take over my life. Women who are interested in that kind of success need to learn from successful men and women, but those who don't want that kind of life - men and women - should feel comfortable in their choices.

[Jack]

Why would most women want to spend all their time sitting in an office instead of eventually having a family and a full life? Is some deal what you're going to remember when you're older, or would most women rather have grandkids visit? That's why women don't want to be bigfirm partners. Hell, I'm a guy and I don't want that either.

[Anonymous Contract Lawyer]

Great post.

[Marsha Keeffer]

Brilliantly stated. Women have got to start playing the game as skillfully as Ellsworth. Yes, boys are socialized with sports and learn about breaking rules early and often. Girls become socialized in groups and seek group approval - quite a different foundation. Excellent essay and one we women need to read again and again.