Women In Legal Education Leadership Still Face Systemic Barriers

Law.com, Women in Academic Leadership Still Face Systemic Barriers:

Despite the progress made in recent years, gender inequality remains a pervasive issue in the legal profession, particularly in academia, which includes women still being underrepresented in influential positions and facing systemic bias, discrimination and harassment that limit their advancement.

In early December, the University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill resigned after giving testimony at a congressional hearing regarding the university’s handling of perceived acts of antisemitism, and barely a month later, Harvard University president Claudine Gay—the university’s first Black president and second woman to lead the institution—resigned over backlash regarding the university’s response to antisemitism on campus, which led to increased scrutiny of her background.

During The Association of American Law Schools annual meeting last week, one session included women leaders in legal education, Kellye Testy, president and CEO of the Law School Admission Council, referred to the news regarding university presidents as “gender violence.”

“The events with the presidents were a very stark example of the pressures and risks of leadership in a sound-bite hungry polarized context,” so it has added “another layer of concern for women who are already navigating the challenges of leading in what remains an unequal world,” Testy said in an email to Law.com on Monday. ...

“The legal academy was not built for anyone other than white males,” Nicola Boothe, dean of the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law, said during the AALS session. “So there are always going to be opportunities for us to feel that we do not belong in this space.”

She highlighted personal obstacles women face including imposter syndrome and isolation, which grow as women advance in leadership positions because “the more you progress, the less of you there are.” ...

The greatest obstacle to gender equality in the legal academy is a gendered division of labor, which translates to a gendered division of power, which is not unique to legal education for the legal profession, but it persists in the legal academy, in large part due to its relative invisibility and lack of interest or meaningful change.