Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Article: Princeton's Woman Problem

I think we have very similar issues here in Australia.

I grew up in a family where girls could do anything and really, until I fell pregnant I was never conscious of discrimination. Sexual harassment, yes, but my gender standing in the way of my career? No.

When I was pregnant I applied for an acting promotion. My female boss told me that while I was the most qualified for the job, I was not to be granted the position because I would be too tired. I took it straight to HR and acted in the position, without issue, until the scheduled end of the stint.

Before I went on maternity leave I was at the top of my game and various business units approached me about working in their areas on my return. I went back after a couple of months (much earlier in hindsight than I should have) and discovered no one was interested. I wanted to work part time and all the roles that had been discussed before I went on leave could have been done part time without issue (I am nothing if not efficient!) However even working 4 days a week with an offer to be on call on the 5th was not accepted. I wasn't prepared to work full-time and so Initially I did menial jobs at my former pay, which was a ridiculous waste of money on their behalf. Over time they remembered just how competent I was again, and loaded me up with higher level work - but would not promote me or pay me for the level of work it was, because I was part time (and as one person said to me, I should feel grateful I was being trusted with the work). This was an organisation with thousands of employees.

I stayed - and I suspect this is a trap for many women - because I could work flexible hours and I was never going to get the same pay part time elsewhere. In the end it was just too demoralising and I left. I have recently gone back to work but in a role with significantly less responsibility than I had, and much less security. We too made the decision for me to be the one who went part time because dh earned more, despite the fact that I have more skill and experience and work in a similar area.

I agree with Steven Sylvester's post too though, women do so little to support each other. I realise that that is a generalisation and there are some amazing women who do wonderful things for the 'sisterhood', but as a rule, I suspect we're all too busy protecting what little we have to feel that we can give much away to anyone else. I think also, in my experience, people in management positions (again, this is a generalisation) generally tend to be people who feel entitled to those role and go about their work in such a manner that others buy in to this (and sometimes, rightly so), rather than necessarily being the best people for the job. I think that sense of entitlement is much more ingrained for men than for women (for many reasons) and so women don't put their hand up as often as men do.

lucounu,

You ask: "How is that a misogynist view?"

At any given time, there are at least five or more men and five or more women who are all equally skilled and competent to become a U.S. Supreme Court justice. To say that just one of those ten or more candidates is "the best available person" is to make a subjective decision that cannot possibly be validated by any kind of consensus. Of course, the president is entitled by law to make the nomination, but I will contend to my dying day that it was misogynistic for George W. Bush to nominate Samuel A. Alito, Jr. to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court, and for the U.S. Senate to consent to that nomination. To add to my disgust over the matter is the fact that George W. Bush is the father of two daughters, and even so he was unable to do the right thing. I concluded then that there was no hope except to force a change in the U.S. Constitution, and so I wrote my proposed amendment.

lucounu, the very few comments I have received were from women who are feminist academics � make that "angry" feminist academics. Their plainly stated intent is to get even, and they will wait 100 years if necessary for that satisfaction. To "get even," they intend to achieve a majority position on the U.S. Supreme Court that will endure without a break for as long as women have been oppressed in American history, which is hundreds of years. They do not want shared equality, they want undeniable dominance for as long as it takes to right the wrongs. Why the anger? Because they see plainly the misogyny that almost all men are blind to, and they feel the abuse and the oppression of that misogyny very personally.

Quite frankly, I believe it is in the best interests of American men to do what is necessary to ratify my proposed amendment as soon as possible. I do not want to live in the nightmare that might occur if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade with a Court that looks like this: http://www.supremecourt.gov/about/members.aspx If a female majority decision overturns Roe v Wade at some future date, then so be it. But that overturning decision should never be made by a Court comprised of six males and three females.

lucounu, it is an odd thing to contemplate, but it seems to me that liberal feminism has overburdened itself by combining its efforts with the LGBT political agenda. Far Left thinking does not embrace biological distinction, as in: "she is a woman because of her body." Rather, they go with "she is a woman because of her mind" � and "if she wants to be a man tomorrow, that is fine, too." It is crazy, but it is heartfelt. According to the thinking, gender is a choice, though sexuality is not. If you go down that road too far, my proposed amendment guaranteeing Supreme Court Gender Equality makes no sense at all. So, very oddly, I think if support for my amendment ever materializes, it will come from conservative Far Right Republican women who are very traditional in their thinking.

My fight for change on the U.S. Supreme Court goes one step farther. Consider: http://steven-a-sylwester.blogspot.com/2009/10/dianne-feinstein-should-be-next-us.html
Yes! Yes! Break up the lawyer monopoly! If the law allows it � and it does � then it should be done. A U.S. Supreme Court justice should be just one thing: a wise person. Certainly, becoming wise does not prerequisite becoming a lawyer. Senator Dianne Feinstein would have busted up the lawyer monopoly magnificently, and it would have been for the good of America if she had.

lucounu, "dared" is a loaded word, but I stand by it. The three women in U.S. history that I admire the most are Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Susan B. Anthony, because those three women dared to change the world. Their fight was monumental, and it was significantly against the fears of fellow women for many, many years � even decades.

The following was how I first introduced my proposed amendment:
http://steven-a-sylwester.blogspot.com/2009/10/xxviii-amendment-to-united-states.html

Today is Memorial Day, May 25, 2009, a day on which all war dead are commemorated in the United States.

Today I commemorate Elizabeth Cady Stanton (November 12, 1815 � October 26, 1902) and Lucretia Mott (January 3, 1793 � November 11, 1880), who together in July of 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, organized the first convention in the U.S. regarding women�s rights (the convention at which Stanton first read her Declaration of Sentiments calling for the right to vote for women), and Susan B. Anthony (February 15, 1820 � March 13, 1906), who joined the cause after first meeting Stanton in 1851 and who then fought tenaciously for the right to vote for women until the day she died 55 years later. Though the cause began in New York on July 19, 1848, New York did not pass a law giving women the right to vote until 1917. In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson began to support the need for a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote, and the amendment was officially proposed on June 4, 1919. During the following two weeks, six states ratified, and the required 36th state ratified on August 18, 1920, which finally made the Nineteenth Amendment to The United States Constitution a constitutional law. Remarkably, the remaining twelve states that then formed the Union took over sixty years to add their ratifications to the amendment, the last state being Mississippi on March 22, 1984.

The Nineteenth Amendment (Amendment XIX) to The United States Constitution reads: �The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.�

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I highly recommend this documentary: http://www.pbs.org/stantonanthony/

Steven A. Sylwester

This thread's been on my mind as I've been following the Wal-Mart class action lawsuit.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/29/walmart-lawsuit-idUSN2927534120110329?pageNumber=1

Based on what? Do you realize that your own criteria for such a determination are chosen by a non-expert on legal matters, and that your statement cannot be confirmed by any kind of valid consensus? Most people who actually work in the law would be of the opinion that there is no point at which one can say that one has achieved maximum growth in legal knowledge, understanding and skill. Ask some.

And most people, after failing to get the support even of women for your idea, would not conclude that all people everywhere, including all women everywhere, are misogynistic, but rather that it's time to go back to the drawing board.

A few statistics on women jurists are available here-- a comparison of the ratios may begin to enlighten you as to where the problem really lies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_United_States_judiciary

From your Wikipedia link:

In addition to other task forces, the Ninth Circuit�s report found that many women believe that a major hindrance to attaining a judicial position is the lack of women �power players� in the connected �old boys clubs� that often influence judicial appointments.

Women judges and women lawyers attribute male-domination of the judiciary in large part to the exclusion of women from the networks that influence judicial appointments. Women lawyers attribute the small number of women appointed to bench and bar committees to the exclusion of women from formal and informal selection processes. A large proportion of women lawyers believe that men have a better chance than women to be promoted to law firm partnerships and to equivalent positions in public law organizations. See Sandra Day O�Connor, The Effects of Gender in the Federal Courts: The Final Report of the Ninth Circuit Gender Bias Task Force: The Quality of Justice, 67 S. Cal. L. Rev. 745, 786-87 (1994).

A recent panel discussion held at Columbia Law School which included Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and other women judges, elicited this response from a former Bush (41) administration employee that echoes the task forces findings:

My experience working on federal judicial appointments during the last administration, and this really surprised me with respect to gender, was that, still in this day and age, there was often a conflict between a male candidate, generally a white male candidate, who, although sometimes quite well-qualified, sometimes not in conventional terms, had much stronger political, and sort of patronage, political connections--you know he had been a party chair, state party chair, or contributed in a significant way to the political decision-maker at the state-level--versus a woman with spectacular educational and experiential qualifications. So that was often a real tension in a particular choice, and invariably the patronage politics would win out over the straight qualification. So I guess it led to my conclusion that, absent the sort of political force of identity politics that is first woman, wanting to put a first woman in a district or a circuit that has never had one, or wanting to just have more women or more African-Americans on the bench that women would be even further behind in terms of their representation on the federal bench, even in this day and age.

In a way, this remains a chicken and egg question; until there are a significant number of women in high positions in government and commerce, the connections needed to attain government appointments and judgeships remains in the hands of the entrenched male establishment. The recommendation put forward to remedy the problem is most succinctly put forward by Justice Ginsburg:

�Women hold up half the sky and they will do so in our courts. They need no favors. They need only equal respect for their talent (and equal sharing by men of the job of bringing up the next generation).�

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lucounu,

You ask: "Based on what?"

The entirety of all of the qualifications required for "Judges of the supreme Court" is found in Article II, Section 2, paragraph 2 of the Constitution of The United States, where it states: "... ; and he (the President) shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: ..."

In other words, there are no qualifications � none whatsoever, except somehow being able to impress the President. Any person is as qualified as any other person according to the qualifications stated in the U.S. Constitution, and no other qualifications exist anywhere else.

Have you ever heard of William O. Douglas? See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_O._Douglas
Quote: "Douglas was sworn into office on April 17, 1939. At the age of forty, Douglas was one of the youngest justices to be confirmed to the Supreme Court."

Selection criteria does not concern itself with whether "one has achieved maximum growth in legal knowledge, understanding and skill," nor should it. What matters is wisdom, and nothing else. All of the "legal knowledge, understanding and skill" in the world is worthless if it does not come coupled with surpassing wisdom. Given a choice between a legal scholar and a wise person, I would pick a wise person to become one of the "Judges of the supreme Court" every time.

lucounu, my contention is this: female wisdom is significantly different than male wisdom, because its perspective is significantly different. As it is, the U.S. Supreme Court is deficient in female wisdom, and the entire nation suffers as a result of that deficiency. The only way to permanently cure the national sickness caused by the deficiency is to ratify my proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Steven A. Sylwester

Steven, sorry, that's a bunch of nonsense. What about hermaphrodite or asexual or transgender wisdom-- don't we need a dash of that every once in a while, based of course on the prevalence within the populace at large? We should be able to find a wise transgendered person somewhere, perhaps working as a baker or truck driver, who would be glad to be plucked from obscurity and plopped on the highest bench in the country.

Steven, you've provided no support for your idea that fitness for a Supreme Court post tops out at a certain level, nor any valid criteria for evaluating wisdom Sylwester-style, nor any sources for your five-of-each-gender number that you pulled out of thin air. Steven, nor have you explained, Steven, how it is misogynist to want to pick the most qualified person for a job.

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Steven, you can now compare one more number, and if you are not yet enlightened I can do nothing for you:
http://www.americanbar.org/content/..._glance_statistics_2011.authcheckdam.pdf

Steven, now you claim that legal knowledge and ability have nothing to do with fitness for the bench. I am glad that you will not be making or approving Supreme Court nominations any time soon, Steven... Steven Steven, there is a reason, Steven Steven Steven, why you can't get any traction for your ideas, and it's because they are dangerously unfounded, fringe notions even in the eyes of feminists. Steven.

Iucounu

Well, obviously, it's not wrong to pick the most qualified candidate. The problem is how to define "most qualified." Is it the person who's got the best connections (and will therefore be more likely to fit in best with the other people who are already there), or the one who might be smarter and more experienced? Or is it someone else who's relatively new but who mmay have new ideas on how to improve the system?

I'd also be grateful if you'd clarify the points you're trying to make instead of linking to a long article. What I pick out as most relevant may not be what you were referring to.

I don't think that connections make one more likely to fit in well with a Court, although they certainly might influence a particular nomination. Most nominations have a lot to do with whether the candidate will (hopefully) advance the goals of the current president or his party. Experience is certainly an important qualification. See Harriet Miers.


I thought it was pretty obvious by referring to a comparison of ratios, and later on to "one more number", but I aim to please. The current Supreme Court composition has a larger proportion of women than either jurists or lawyers do. If one believes that qualifications are important, that there can be someone who is more qualified for the job, and that women of equal experience and talent are no more or less qualified to be justices than men, the problem would seem to be too few women in the legal system, not too few women on the Court. The solution is not to force a nomination for a woman at a particular time to the most important position in the legal/judicial system, but to improve the power and presence of women in the system as a whole.

lucounu,

I am sure you never bothered to read my proposed amendment before criticizing it, so I will help you:

http://supreme-court-gender-equality-pac.blogspot.com/

XXVIII Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Supreme Court Gender Equality

Gender equality shall be guaranteed on the Supreme Court and on the Court of Appeals according to the following:

1. The Congress shall determine an odd number of Justices no fewer than nine who shall together compose the Supreme Court. The total number of Justices shall include one Chief Justice of the United States and the remaining even number of Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, of whom all shall be citizens of the United States.

Of the total number of Associate Justices, half shall be male by legal designation and half shall be female by legal designation.

When vacancies occur, the President shall nominate Justices to the Supreme Court who are then appointed by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate. The Chief Justice shall be appointed for nine years, and shall not be reappointed Chief Justice thereafter. Associate Justices shall be appointed to hold their offices during good behavior. Successive Chief Justices shall alternate between male and female without exception.

The President shall nominate the Chief Justice according to gender from among the Associate Justices, except no person shall be eligible for nomination who would be more than 69 years old at the time of appointment. If no Associate Justice is qualified by age to be appointed the Chief Justice, the President shall appoint any other qualified person.

If an Associate Justice is nominated to be the Chief Justice by the President but fails to be appointed by the Senate, that Associate Justice shall retain the position of Associate Justice. If an Associate Justice becomes the Chief Justice, that Justice shall retire from the Supreme Court when the nine-year appointment as Chief Justice expires.

2. All Court of Appeals en banc courts shall be composed of an even number of Circuit Judges, of whom half shall be male by legal designation and half shall be female by legal designation. Only if the Circuit Chief Judge presides shall an entire en banc court be composed of an odd number of Judges.

3. Upon ratification, the amendment shall be enacted straightforwardly in due time.

All new Associate Justices shall be female until an equal number of male and female Associate Justices are seated on the Supreme Court. Thereafter, all Associate Justice seats will be identified as being either male or female, and will be filled as the need arises according to strict gender distinction without exception.

The current Chief Justice shall complete a nine-year term from the date he was sworn in as Chief Justice, and shall then immediately retire from the Supreme Court and shall be replaced by the first female Chief Justice of the United States. If the current Chief Justice leaves his position for any reason before his term expires, his appointed successor shall be female.

On a district basis, all Court of Appeals appointments shall be female until gender equality is achieved among active Circuit Judges. Thereafter, new appointments shall be made in a manner that maintains gender equality among all active Judges.

* * *

The key sentence regarding your concern is this one: "Of the total number of Associate Justices, half shall be male by legal designation and half shall be female by legal designation."

Transgendered people and homosexuals are not excluded in any way.

lucounu, if you are unable to find one woman whom you would deem to be qualified to be a U.S. Supreme Court justice, then you are a misogynist. I could easily find ten qualified women in less than one week � probably in less than 48 hours � probably in a long afternoon. And every one of those ten women I would find would be at least as qualified as any ten men you might be able to find.

The best woman out there at the last opportunity was U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, and she was not even selected. Consider: http://steven-a-sylwester.blogspot.com/2009/10/dianne-feinstein-should-be-next-us.html

Excerpt:

Dianne Feinstein is 76 years old, so her career as a justice would probably last less than ten years. Feinstein was born in San Francisco, California, and graduated from Stanford University in 1955 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History. In the late 1950s, she worked in the San Francisco District Attorney�s office. She first entered politics in 1961 when she worked to end housing discrimination in San Francisco.

Feinstein was first elected to public office in 1969 when she began her nine-year tenure on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. She was President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors when San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated on November 27, 1978, so by law she succeeded to the mayoralty on December 4. 1978. She was elected mayor of San Francisco in her own right in 1979 and was reelected in 1983, serving until January 8, 1988. In 1987, City and State magazine named Feinstein the nation�s �Most Effective Mayor.�

In 1990, Feinstein made an unsuccessful bid for Governor of California, losing in the general election to then U.S. Senator Pete Wilson. On November 3, 1992, she won a California special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated in 1991 by Pete Wilson. She then won reelection to the U.S. Senate in 1994, 2000, and 2006.

Throughout her almost seventeen years as a U.S. senator, Feinstein has continuously served on four U.S. Senate committees: Rules, Judiciary, Appropriations, and Intelligence. During the 110th Congress (2007�2009), she was chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration. During the current 111th Congress (2009�2011), she is chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Additionally, she is chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Interior and Related Agencies of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, and is chairwoman of the Senate�s International Narcotics Control Caucus.

In her service on the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Feinstein currently serves on five different subcommittees: 1) Administration Oversight and the Courts; 2) Constitution; 3) Crime and Drugs; 4) Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship; and 5) Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security.

Though U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein has not earned a law degree from an accredited law school, she is certainly more knowledgeable and more steeped in the law than almost anyone else in the United States, including law school professors, practicing attorneys, and sitting judges � even perhaps including some sitting U.S. Supreme Court justices! Though her education in the law was not �formal,� it was no less complete than if it had been formal; in fact, her law education was both firsthand and thorough, and it was ingrained through and through like only front-lines political battles can � and do � ingrain things.

While other U.S. Supreme Court justices would consider and ponder the law before making a ruling in a case, Feinstein as a justice would relate to and experience the law instead � and there is a HUGE difference in those distinctions. While the other justices have an inherited ownership of the law that is mostly academic and intellectual, Feinstein would bring to the Court something new: a battlefield-scarred sensibility that would sometimes rightly claim �I helped build it� ownership, which is an ownership that knows exactly what is buried inside the constructs of the agreed upon language that was signed into law.

The language of the law can be messy, especially if it is what remains after contentious political battling and is the stuff of uneasy and unwanted compromise. As is, the U.S. Supreme Court sits distant and removed from the legislative fray, and consequently functions out of a mixture of deep learning and active imagination instead of firsthand knowledge. The U.S. Constitution allows for the Court to be �distant and removed;� such a thing is not forbidden, but neither is it required. It is the folly of our times that we have failed to cross-pollinate the Court with influences from outside of our nation�s judicial system, even though the law fully allows that cross-pollination to occur.

The United States has three branches of government in its Constitution that together in their interplay make and define the whole: The Legislative Branch, The Executive Branch, and The Judicial Branch. Fifteen of the 44 men who have served as president of the United States also served as a U.S. senator. At the same time, only six of the 111 men and women who have served as justices of the U.S. Supreme Court also served as a U.S. senator � again, the last serving justice of the six was Hugo L. Black, who left the U.S. Senate more than 71 years ago in 1937. What an enormous waste of talent!

During her career in politics, Dianne Feinstein has spent more than nine years as a government executive being mayor of San Francisco and more than sixteen years as a legislator being a U.S. senator. No one currently sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court comes even remotely close to that level of experience; in fact, no one currently sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court has ever served outside of the judicial branch of our government. Though Feinstein is a consummate team player, it is easy to imagine that she might give new definition to the term �upbraid� someday along the way if she were made a justice on the Court, especially in her dealings with Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Alito. Certainly, Feinstein would be a quick study, and would also be a fierce and clever opponent in the forging of a majority.

Does Feinstein have faults? Yes, absolutely! Does Feinstein have political enemies? Yes, absolutely! Has Feinstein made mistakes along the way? Yes, absolutely! All of those �Yes� answers are the inevitable consequence of a long and successful political career in both local and national politics. In a December 2007 SurveyUSA News Poll in California, 51% approved of the job Diane Feinstein was doing as a U.S. senator while 39% disapproved. A 51% vote wins political elections, and Feinstein knows how to win political elections.

If all politics is local, then final considerations are things personal. Dianne Feinstein�s only child is San Francisco Superior Court Judge Katherine Feinstein. Dianne Feinstein is the daughter of a surgeon, and is the widow of a neurosurgeon, who was her second husband. She divorced her first husband, who was an attorney who later became a judge. Her current husband is a wealthy international businessman. But the deeper truth is this: Feinstein�s ethnic heritage is Jewish, though her maternal grandparents were of the Russian Orthodox faith after converting from Judaism to Christianity. Feinstein attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart High School and received a Catholic religious education while also going to Hebrew school and synagogue while growing up in San Francisco. Her stated religion is Judaism. On a U.S Supreme Court that currently has six Roman Catholics serving as justices, throwing Dianne Feinstein into the mix could create quite a show.

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lucounu, there is not one man on the whole planet who is more qualified than Dianne Feinstein is to be a U.S. Supreme Court justice, and Feinstein is not even a lawyer. I do not agree with Feinstein on several issues that are very important to me, but I would stand up and cheer her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court if it ever happened.

Steven A. Sylwester