Law Schools' New Female Face
An influx of women as students has changed courses and attitudes
Not so long ago, America's law schools were mostly male preserves. As recently as 1970, more than 90 percent of students were men, and some professors made a point of calling on the few women in their classrooms only on periodic "Ladies' Days." Former Attorney General Janet Reno, a 1963 Harvard law graduate, recalls then Dean Erwin Griswold asking incoming women at an annual tea to justify holding a place that could have gone to a man. Hannah Arterian, now a dean at Arizona State University, says that whenever female law students at the University of Iowa in the early 1970s spoke up in class, they were made to feel that they were "representing [their] sex--it was awful."
It took three decades, but women have achieved parity, at least by one measure. For the first time last fall, more women than men applied to the nation's 183 accredited law schools. And according to figures recently compiled by the American Bar Association, female enrollment in the class of 2004 tops 49 percent.
Walk into just about any law school, and the change is readily apparent. At American University law school in Washington, D.C., 16 of 19 students in a recent session of Prof. Susan Carle's employment law class were women. Across the country that same week at Boalt Hall, the law school at the University of California-Berkeley, 36 women and eight men heard Linda Hamilton Krieger lecture on job discrimination. Students cheered an announcement that the faculty had endorsed Krieger for a tenured position. Moreover, as the rosters of female students have expanded, more women have risen to leadership positions on law reviews and in student government.
New standards. As women infiltrated law schools, they found that the content of some courses underplayed issues of special concern to them, and they have pushed successfully for changes. Twenty years ago, criminal law classes, for example, rarely mentioned rape and other forms of violence against women. Sexual harassment in the workplace was not a topic for textbooks and lectures on employment law. These issues are standard fare now. Required courses in the law of personal injuries, for example, are likely to include discussions of how female injury victims should be compensated for reproductive medical problems and for the value of lost work in the home as well as on the job.
Professors say that these changes reflect not simply the shifting interests of law school students but the evolution of many areas of law, thanks in large part to the work of the increasing number of female professors. Recent scholarship by women "has persuaded lawyers to make new claims [on behalf of women] and encouraged judges to find in their favor," says Leslie Bender, a professor at the Syracuse University law school.
In the wake of the influx of women, law schools now put more emphasis on "clinics," where students learn by representing real clients. According to faculty members, female students are more inclined than men are to take part in programs that involve hands-on instruction in aiding people in need.
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