Close the Gap

In the 2001 film “Legally Blonde,” Reese Witherspoon played a sorority-girl-turned-aspiring-lawyer as the world looked on and laughed. Witherspoon’s character, Elle Woods—who majored in fashion merchandising, carries a pet Chihuahua, and enrolls at Harvard Law School to win back an ex-boyfriend—undoubtedly deserves some of the skepticism she encounters when she arrives on campus. But the ease with which we laugh at Woods may betray a broader, more pernicious attitude towards women in the legal profession, no matter the color of their hair or their dog’s outfits.

Whether such an attitude is responsible for the gender disparity that exists at the Law School we cannot say. What we can say is that the disparity is glaring and troubling. Though men and women enter on equal footing, female students (despite blind assessment) soon fall behind in grades and honors. They comprise less than 20 percent of tenure-track faculty. Their representation on the prestigious Harvard Law Review is nearly as bad. School culture, characterized by cutthroat competition and the Socratic method, may also take a greater toll on women than on men, as was suggested by the “Shatter the Ceiling” coalition, founded to address systemic gender disparities at the Law School.

“The law leaves much room for interpretation, but very little for self-doubt,” Woods’s professor warns her class. When the truth is ambiguous, masculine volume and confidence can sound a lot like well-reasoned argument. The spike in women’s marks following the Law School’s introduction of a blind-grading policy is evidence that some critics will hold the same quality of work in lower regard when they know it was produced by a woman. Even when women deserve respect, subtle issues of perception—even in the absence of outright discrimination—mean that they are less likely to get it.

History is also a problem—HLS did not admit women until the 1950s; they did not make up a significant portion of the student body until recently. The disadvantages we observe may be in part the legacy of an old boys’ club.

But social psychology and history are explanations, not justifications, for the gender disparity. The more difficult and pressing question is: What can be done to address the inequity?

We hesitate to encourage the Law School to discard the Socratic method, a remedy endorsed by the Shatter coalition. It does women an extreme disservice to suggest that they are incapable of learning under a particular pedagogy. The Socratic method may be harsh, but we believe it prepares lawyers for a profession that requires rigorous and sometimes rapid analysis.

Prominent women like U.S. Supreme Court Justice and former Law School Dean Elena Kagan, former Law School professor and sitting U.S. Senator Elizabeth A. Warren, and current Dean Martha L. Minow inspire confidence. But their efficacy as role models for ambitious female law students is limited if their successes are viewed as the exception and not the rule. More work should be done to even out representation on the HLS faculty. Even if the same could not be said 20 years ago, we doubt very seriously that there are fewer qualified up-and-coming female attorneys than there are males.

Moreover, solutions to complex problems are rarely aided by a lack of transparency. We believe HLS, at the very least, should release data on grades, something it has not done since the implementation of its honors, pass/fail system. We would also encourage students and professors to reflect on personal biases. If the disparity is in part the result of underlying social and perceptual problems, it cannot be fixed overnight. But incremental changes will likely precede systemic ones.

Hopefully, if there is a 2021 movie about a woman attending Harvard Law, the audience won’t be laughing.