Content area
Full Text
Joan Brockman, (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press 2001)
DESPITE THE FACT that some women enter the legal profession in order to enhance their power in society, problems that arise in the labour force generally, such as discrimination and sexual harassment, also manifest themselves within the practice of law. Studies reveal that women lawyers earn less than male lawyers and are less likely to become partners in law firms. Many of these problems reflect a deeply gendered notion of "the lawyer" and a workplace structured on an assumption that lawyers are not encumbered by obligations such as childcare. Joan Brockman's important new book explores these questions, placing them in the context of conditions of work such as the expanding work week.
The book is based on an empirical study of 100 British Columbia lawyers called to the bar between 1986 and 1990, and who were still practising when the random sample was drawn. Brockman uses extensive quotations from interviews with these lawyers to convey their views and experiences, making the book a fascinating, accessible read. The chapters are focused on different themes that were drawn out in the interviews: why people went into law and what they like and dislike about it, work histories, discrimination and sexual harassment, views on the adversarial system, and difficulties of balancing work and family responsibilities. Throughout the book, which reports extensive data from this study and others that I cannot begin to relate in this review, Brockman highlights differences between women and men when they arose, notably in relation to career advancement, discrimination and harassment, and work and family conflict. Her overall theme is that despite the elimination of the exclusionary techniques used historically to keep women and racialized groups out of the legal profession (Chapter 1), their full participation in the profession remains inhibited. Women may be entering law school in the same, or greater, numbers than men, but they are not yet fully participating citizens in the profession.
Of interest to me as a law professor, who often fields inquiries from (especially female) students with a social conscience...