Not One Legal Secretary Surveyed Preferred Working with Women Partners; Prof Offers Reasons Why

[AngryAmish]

"When Chicago-Kent law professor Felice Batlan surveyed 142 legal secretaries at larger law firms in 2009, not one expressed a preference for working with a female partner.

Asked whether they preferred to work for male or female partners or associates, 35 percent preferred working for male partners, 15 percent preferred working for male associates, 3 percent preferred working for female associates, none preferred working for female partners, and 47 percent had no opinion.

Ninety-five percent of the legal secretaries who responded to the online survey were women. Most were middle aged and had considerable experience. They came from firms of more than 100 lawyers. Batlan wrote about the results in an article (purchase req.) published by Emerald Insight. Forbes' She Negotiates blog also reported on the survey findings."

[Nye Bevan]

1. The absolute worst cattiness I have ever heard in my life

is when I have overheard women discussing their female boss.

Meow meow scratch scratch.

[TwilightGardener]

2. In my experience, as a female who's had numerous female supervisors

(some good, some bad): Jealousy comes into play bigtime in the female boss/female employee dynamic--in both directions--which doesn't exist in female employee-male boss relationships. I'm sure that sounds sexist on my part, but I've seen female bosses become threatened by young talented female underlings, and female underlings resent the success of the female boss. Women are much harsher on each other in the workplace, and I think that's a natural residual effect of years of gender discrimination, lower pay and less respect.

[USA_1]

3. Interesting!

I remember applying for a job as a legal aid back around 1990. I overhead three women legal secretaries saying how they hated to work for women. The reason being that they said female lawyers feel compelled to prove they are better then men. As a consequence, they push and overwork their secretaries and get testy with everyone else. They did not give more specific examples and I never got the job I applied for so I never got to know what exactly was the problem.

[AngryAmish]

4. Women jurors judge women lawyers much more harshly then men

I don't have the studies in front of me but women jurors pick apart female lawyers. They think they dress too sexy or too dowdy, their manner is too bossy or too passive. Men get a much larger benefit of the doubt.