Exploring a Research Agenda of the Feminization of the Legal Profession: Theories of Gender and Social Change |
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| Authors: | Carrie Menkel-Meadow |
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| Affiliation: | Carrie Menkel-Meadow;is professor of law at UCLA Law School. J. D. 1974, University of Pennsylvania. Earlier versions of this essay were presented to the 1988 Law &Society Meeting, Vail, Colorado, and the UCLA Faculty Research Seminar on Women, Culture and Society, October, 1988. |
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| Abstract: | This essay suggests that recent work in feminist theory should reorient the questions that are asked about the role of gender in the legal profession. Some use gender as a category of analysis to explore differences that reinforce conventional gendered stereotypes, such as the conceptualization of work and family in lawyering as a "women's issue." Others use conventional sociology of the professions analysis, such as stratification, to measure women's "success" and "satisfaction" in the context of the traditional law firm. By focusing on some recent historical and sociological research on women in the legal and medical professions, the author illustrates how we might ask different questions, not to reify gender differences but to more fully examine the role that gender difference, as socially constructed, might play in the transformation of law practice. |
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