Blogging as a Feminist Legal Method

From a University of Pennsylvania Law School press release:

Alison I. Stein, a student at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, ... will present her paper – Women Lawyers Blog for Workplace Equality: Blogging as a Feminist Legal Method – at the Joint Annual Meetings of Law and Society Association and Canadian Law and Society Association, May 30 in Montreal. ...

"From cattle ranchers to diamond merchants to third-wave feminists … groups of people opt out of the legal system – and instead use personalized and informal methods of rights assertion – as a means of ‘overcoming the ineffectiveness’ of state-sponsored laws,” writes Stein. ... 

[W]hile nearly one half of all law school graduates since 1992 have been women, only about 15% of law firm partners are female and women comprise only 25% of tenured law school professors, the career goal that Stein has set for herself. ...  Female lawyers turn to blogging because the law’s ability to vindicate their rights is limited, their grievances are born out of institutional biases or mindsets, and because the anonymity of blogging lets them give voice to their complaints without risking their reputations.

(Hat Tip:  Above the Law.)  The abstract of the paper is below the fold:

Legal scholars and academic commentators have long written about the ways in which close-knit communities of people employ extra-legal or non-legal methods to structure conflict, resolve disputes, and advocate for their rights and interests. From cattle ranchers to diamond merchants to third-wave feminists, scholars emphasize how groups of people opt out of the legal system and instead use personalized and informal methods of rights assertion as a means of overcoming the ineffectiveness of state-sponsored laws, and because they reject the law as a viable means of achieving change. Similar to cattle ranchers and diamond traders, a growing number of women lawyers have developed their own method of rights assertion and conflict resolution that does not involve turning to the legal system. Despite the cottage industry of articles, books, and reports describing gender inequality in the legal profession, few, if any, have focused on what women lawyers are actually doing to address the challenges and grievances they face in the workplace, and to increase the proportion of women in leadership positions in the profession. Based on a detailed, empirical analysis of women lawyers in law firms, this Article argues that similar to cattle ranchers and diamond traders, a growing number of women lawyers have rejected the law as a viable means of personal advocacy and are instead, using blogging - an alternative, informal and impersonal form of engagement - to advocate for their rights and interests in the workplace. One would expect that women lawyers, when confronted with unfair hiring practices, unequal pay, or unjust choices, would turn to the legal system. They are legally trained and undoubtedly immersed in the law, and therefore, one might presume that they are particularly attentive to legal rights and predisposed to think of personal grievances in a legal framework. Nonetheless, a growing group of women lawyers are using the Internet - and, in particular, blogging - to resolve their disputes, address their personal grievances, challenge implicit male bias engrained in the profession, and share and obtain the information they need to become stronger bargainers in the workplace.

For more, see:

• Blogging is the New Feminist Act (The Huffington Post)
• Blogging as Feminism (Legal Blog Watch)
• Feminst Law Professors