GENDER BIAS IN THE LEGAL PROFESSION - WOMEN SEE IT, MEN DONT

Although the number of women in the legal profession has increased dra matically over the last 20 years, evidence shows that women continue t o lag well behind men on every indicator of success. While the differe nces in the careers of women and men lawyers have been explained in te rms of either structural organizational constraints or tokenism, neith er adequately addresses the persistence of the gender-based pecking or der in law. It is argued here that part of the reason why this two-tie red pecking order persists is related to the meanings attached to gend er itself. No one has examined the social construction of gender in th e legal profession. Thus, the analyses reported here add a new dimensi on to the research on the legal profession. This paper focuses on the content of gender interpretations and the professional contexts in whi ch these interpretations are found. I examine these by analyzing the a ttitudes of women and men lawyers and their observations of gender bia s in professional situations. I predict that men lawyers will hold mor e traditional attitudes about gender roles than women lawyers and that women lawyers will observe more gender bias than men lawyers. Using d ata from a large survey of lawyers (N = 1,863) in the Pittsburgh Metro politan area, I compare (1) the gender role attitudes of women and men lawyers; (2) the observations of gender bias in the professional inte ractions of women and men lawyers; and (3) I analyze women lawyers' ac counts of their personal experiences with gender bias. The results sup port the predictions, and these findings are augmented by analysis of in-depth accounts of actual experiences of gender bias by women lawyer s in the course of doing legal work.