finally. a post.

i have never seen a speaker captivate an audience at our school like the one i saw yesterday. every laptop was closed & every pair of eyes was glued to the woman at the front of the class. in fact, i had even planned on reading for class during the presentation, but was sucked in. the presentation was about women in litigation. the speaker made two very interesting points (and i hope i don't butcher this explanation too badly...)

first, that women are confined to this box. it is a box that stands for how we should act, what we should look like, sociological norms that we should conform to, etc. BUT when a woman exhibits behaviors outside of this box, she is labeled one of four things: bitch, tease, whiner, or hysterical female. think about this. have you ever been labeled one of these things for acting outside of the "box?" for example, the speaker mentioned that some students have placed her in one of those categories as a professor. HOWEVER, while some students may have assigned this "label," i think it is their way of reacting to an unconventional woman professor. for some reason, she does not fit in some students' "boxes" so she is unfairly labeled this way (even though she is one of the best professors here). the point really hit home in the presentation when the speaker asked all of us as women to never assign these labels to each other. this can absolutely be applied to women in law-- instead of trying to compete w/ one another, we need to be helping each other.

the second point was about emotion. i honestly wish i could remember more so i could explain it better, but i can't so i'll go on...

another thing i just remembered is what the speaker mentioned about younger women--that they are more likely to say they haven't been victim to sex discrimination. i'm not sure i quite agree w/ this statement as a young woman, but maybe that's because i have more of a background with these types of issues. or perhaps younger women are more naive as to the harsh sexist realities of the world today. i think professor seymore made an excellent point when she asked us to think about the amount of respect given to young male professors vs. young female professors. my point is, maybe there isn't as much outward blatant sexism today, but it still exists.

final point: yesterday's women in litigation presentation was really great. i hope it opened some minds & motivated others to make changes.

that's all for now.