Blog 26 Male Roles in Assisting Women in Gendered Organizations

Men play various roles in assisting women lawyers. They can play the role of emphasizing and endorsing legal advice to clients who seem to not be listening to female lawyers. Male lawyers with female partners may be responsible for reassuring them that their female counterpart is just as educated and experienced as him. Other times men may have to step in and take depositions when the opposing attorney is being overly aggressive and obnoxious towards the female.

According to Britton, the theory of gendered organizations states, “we should see organizations not as neutral organisms infected by the germs of workers’ gender (and sexuality and race and class) identities but as sites in which these attributes are present in preexisting assumptions and constructed through ongoing practice” (2003: 3). The previous examples show that the workplace is not gender neutral Men are relieved of their responsibilities of their biases if they say that they see women and equally capable, even when clients and jury’s do not. Gender biased practices will prevail as long as they are disregarded, overlooked and made acceptable if females continue to turn to the males to swoop in and save them.

Gendered organizations in the legal setting exist because traditionally females were not allowed to practice law. For example, the author’s mother was one of only two females in a class of 83 students to graduate from Boston Law School in 1963. During this time the few women who practiced law were known as pioneers. Over the decades more and more women have attended law school and graduated to practice law, but there is still a significant gender gap. According to English, at this time men make up 70% of practicing lawyers placing women in the clear minority (2003: 4).

Britton, D. M. (2003). At Waork in the Iron Cage: The Prison as Gendered
Organization . New York and London: The New York University Press.

English, H. (2003). Gender on Trial: Sexual Stereotypes and Work/Life Balance in
the Legal Workplace. New York: ALM Publishing.