But let’s conclude with what I draw from juxtaposing in our minds the NAWL chart and Becker’s work, and recalling that our no-meaningful-correlation result in terms of financial performance means neither more men nor more women is discernibly superior.
I think the only logical conclusion is simple, and perhaps you will think it is deceptively so: By the time the equity partnership decision is made, the men and the women who are elevated are equally qualified.
Now, this may strike you as the most insipid and obvious of conclusions possible in discussing this tangled area, but I think it tells us something. First, as an industry, we are not “discriminating,” in the labor market sense, against women who come up for partner. If we were, Becker (not to mention common sense) tell us that firms with lower female partner ratios would underperform their peers—they would be paying the “tax wedge” to inflict their irrational preferences on their talent pool.
But the far more important thing I think it tells us follows if we can stipulate just one more—I assume trivial—assumption: That assumption is that among the entering ranks of first-year associates talent is equally distributed between the men and the women.
This tells us that our problem is everything that happens in-between first-year and equity partner eligibility. Specifically, I think we can safely surmise that the forces at work causing disproportionate attrition among women are things like:
- unequal exposure to the most talented senior partners, the most interesting matters, and the most valuable clients;
- unequal participation in the entire congeries of “non-work” networks, relationships, and affiliations;
- and perhaps, though as individual firms we can do nothing whatsoever to affect this macro-societal issue, unequal support at home for women’s career aspirations and commitments.
If this is right, no amount of dollars and hours thrown at conferences, posters, exhortations, vision statements, “training and coaching,” and rah-rah feel-good sessions will move the needle. As the managing partner of the firm profiled in the HBR piece says,
Monsellato [the MP] laughs at the ideas of “leaning in” and diversity programs. “If partners aren’t convinced, you won’t get anywhere. And diversity programs headed by women reporting to all-male boards will never work.” He never referred to his gender push as a diversity initiative, and he has never run diversity programs.
[…]Instead, Monsellato tackled the problem personally. He was involved in every promotion discussion. “For a long time,” he says, “I was the only one allocating cases.” He insisted on gender parity from the beginning. He personally ensured that the best assignments were evenly awarded between men and women. He tracked promotions and compensation to ensure parity. If there was a gap, he asked why. He put his best female lawyers on some of his toughest cases.
The good news is that Monsellato’s has achieved a firm with 50/50 gender parity from top to bottom.
The bad news is it’s boots on the ground work, from day one through equity partner eligibility and of course beyond. Hard, relentless, opposed—so we readily see, and so our three+ decades of fruitless efforts confirm—to the prevailing mindset, habits, and comfort zone, and nothing we can outsource or buy off the shelf. And did I mention that it will take years for results to begin to become apparent?
Or, of course, you can continue to throw away the two-thirds of your entering women lawyers who will be every bit as talented as men as equity partners; you’ll just never let them have the chance.
Two thoughts:
1) If there are equally qualified women and men, in equal proportions, then wouldn’t it be the case that by going deeper into the pool of men than women to promote partners, firms are getting somewhat less qualified men than the women they could have had? Now, of course, there are many characteristics that determine qualification, and perhaps the differences are insufficient to translate into large differences in money, but all things being equal, it seems that some women don’t make partner despite being more qualified than the men who do. If you look at the chart, with Wilmer having the most female partners, it’s still nowhere near 50%. Would you expect a tipping point at some percentage of women partners that produces larger changes, as opposed to a linear relationship?
2) Your conclusions about what hold women back are common, but by no means the whole story, and in my experience aren’t necessarily the most prevalent or important issues. For example, men are judged on their potential while women are judged on what they have done. When it comes to rainmaking ability for partnership decisions, men have an edge if all they need is potential. Women are expected to prove themselves over and over while men only need do so once, which is frustrating to the women. A “go-getter” attitude is appreciated in younger associates, but by the time women are at their 5th or 6th year, that attitude is considered aggressive, sharp-elbowed, and the sign of someone who is not a team player. Women are taken off cases when they become pregnant and have trouble getting work when they return from leave, which I have heard male partners say is because those women will probably just stay home with the kid anyway. But the result is they can’t meet their hours and thus won’t get bonuses or promotions. Even in this day and age, sexual harassment is rampant and plenty firms work to quell the outcry rather than address the problem.
The solution, of course, is to have women partners who are viewed as supremely competent, because then no one will question that women can do all the things men can do.