A Cba Gender Bias Task Force Update
| Publication year | 1993 |
| Pages | 254 |
| Citation | Vol. 22 No. 2 Pg. 254 |
1993, February, Pg. 254. A CBA Gender Bias Task Force Update
In 1991, CBA President Tom Cross created the Colorado Bar Association's Gender Bias Task Force ("Task Force"). The Task Force was created to examine gender bias within the profession and to make recommendations to the CBA Board of Governors so that gender bias can be eliminated. Members of the Task Force included representatives of large law firms, sole practitioners, the judiciary, public sector agencies and community members. The Task Force conducted a survey to look at gender bias within the CBA and use the results to make recommendations to eliminate gender bias through education of the legal profession and law-related organizations.
CBA officers, committee and forum chairs, local and specialty bar associations, and law-related associations and agencies were surveyed to determine the gender distribution within those groups and whether any special educational efforts were made in the matter. The roster of the CBA officers, members of the Board of Governors, committee chairs, forum chairs and section officers was reviewed for the years from 1987 to 1992 to determine the number of women holding these positions. For the five-year period, 25 percent of the CBA officers and Executive Council members were women. However, during those five years, the presidents of the CBA were all men (there has been only one female CBA president in its history), except for two of the five years when the senior vice-president was a woman. Twenty-two percent of the Board of Governors representatives were women, as were 32 percent of the committee chairs, 32 percent of the forum chairs and 27 percent of the section officers. These statistics correlate with the number of women in the legal profession in Colorado.
The Task Force reviewed the membership lists of local bar associations outside the Denver metropolitan area and the attorney registration lists of the Colorado Supreme Court to determine whether women attorneys in Colorado are joining local bar associations and the Colorado Bar Association. In reviewing this information, the Task Force was aware that attorneys may belong to more than one local bar association or may join a local bar association that is not in the geographic area where the...
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