Sex Discrimination or Gender Inequality
![handle is hein.journals/flr57 and id is 949 raw text is: SEX DISCRIMINATION OR GENDER
INEQUALITY?*
LESLIE BENDER**
Judge Judith Kaye, in her October 1988 Noreen E. McNamara Memo-
rial Lecture,I took on the big Wall Street law firms. She praised the pro-
gress that these firms have made in the last thirty-five years by increasing
the numbers of women in their ranks. She gave us statistics and stories
about women in big firms, and after carefully setting the stage and pre-
paring us for a continued accolade, she let loose her critique. With fi-
nesse and aplomb, she clandestinely played Antony's role in Julius
Caesar, by backhandedly implying that the powerful partners in big law
firms, like Brutus, [s]o are they all, all honourable men.2 Or perhaps
that is what I read because that is what I wanted her to say.
I.
The prestigious male bastions of Wall Street law firms have finally
done the honorable thing and opened their conclaves to significant num-
bers of women.3 Women who conform to male expectations and predic-
tions of success may now enter and play by their rules. These
institutional rules of the game, by which one wins success, power,
prestige, security and money, were designed for persons like the named
* Copyright 1989 by Leslie Bender and the Fordham Law Review.
** Associate Professor, Syracuse University College of Law. My research assistants,
Timothy McFarland and Melissa Davis, helped me with this essay. Their work is
appreciated.
1. Kaye, Women Lawyers in Big Firms: A Study in Progress Toward Gender Equal-
ity, 57 Fordham L. Rev. 111 (1988).
2. W. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, act 3, scene 2.
3. Actually, big law firms have only admitted significant numbers of white women,
not all women. In employment discrimination, the category women cannot serve as a
universal, all-inclusive category, because there are meaningful disparities in the power,
job opportunities, and salaries of minority women vis-a-vis non-minority women. United
States Census Bureau data from 1985 illustrated that while white women earned 63% of
white men's annual earnings, Afro-American women earned 57.1%, and Hispanic wo-
men earned even less-only 52.1%. See The Wage Gap: Myths and Facts, in P. Rothen-
berg, Racism and Sexism: An Integrated Study 69, 70-71 (1988). For an example from
the legal profession, see Peschel and Linden, The Gender Gap: Employment and Pay Dif-
ferences, Nat'l L.J., Mar. 27, 1989, at 22, 24 (Minority women reported the lowest aver-
age starting salaries in the survey-$34,819. The average starting salary for minority
men, by contrast, was $2,326 higher ($37,145). Non-minority women received starting
salaries slightly lower than non-minority males.). The same survey indicated that mi-
nority women were least represented in very large law firms. See id. In a breakdown of
large law firms by numbers of women and minority lawyers (are minority women counted
twice?), it is clear that minorities fare much worse than women generally. See
Weisenhaus, Still a Long Way to Go For Women, Minorities, Nat'l L.J.,.Feb. 8, 1988, at 1,
48-53. Since we can fairly presume that not all of the minority lawyers listed in the
survey are women, minority women are even a smaller subset of the minority statistics.
See id.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/flr57&div=49&collection=journals&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Sex Discrimination or Gender Inequality
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most