Becoming gentlemen: women's experiences at one Ivy League law school.

• Author: Guinier, Lani
• Position: University of Pennsylvania Law School

INTRODUCTION

In this Article we describe preliminary research by and about women law students at the University of Pennsylvania Law School - a typical, if elite, law school stratified deeply along gender lines.(2) Our database draws from students enrolled at the Law School between 1987 and 1992, and includes academic performance data from 981 students, self-reported survey data from 366 students, written narratives from 104 students, and group-level interview data of approximately eighty female and male students.(3) From these data we conclude that the law school experience of women in the aggregate differs markedly from that of their male peers.(4)

First, we find strong academic differences between graduating men and women. Despite identical entry-level credentials, this performance differential between men and women is created in the first year of law school and maintained over the next three years.(5) By the end of their first year in law school, men are three times more likely than women to be in the top 10% of their law school class.(6)

Second, we find strong attitudinal differences between women and men in year one, and yet a striking homogenization by year three.(7) The first-year women we studied are far more critical than their first-year male peers of the social status quo, of legal education, and of themselves as students.(8) Third-year female students, however, are less critical than their third-year male colleagues, and far less critical than their first-year female counterparts.(9) A disproportionate number of the women we studied enter law school with commitments to public interest law, ready to fight for social justice. But their third-year female counterparts leave law school with corporate ambitions and some indications of mental health distress.(10)

Third, many women are alienated by the way the Socratic method is used in large classroom instruction, which is the dominant pedagogy for almost all first-year instruction.(11) Women self-report much lower rates of class participation than do men for all three years of law school.(12) Our data suggest that many women do not "engage" pedagogically with a methodology that makes them feel strange, alienated, and "delegitimated."(13) These women describe a dynamic in which they feel that their voices were "stolen" from them during the first year. Some complain that they can no longer recognize their former selves, which have become submerged inside what one author has called an alienated "social male."(14)

Law school is the most bizarre place I have ever been. . . . [First year! was like a frightening out-of-body experience. Lots of women agree with me. I have no words to say what I feel. My voice from that year is gone.[15]

Another young woman added, "[F]or me the damage is done; it's in me. I will never be the same. I feel so defeated."

Even those women who do well academically report a higher degree of alienation from the Law School than their male counterparts, based in part on complaints that "women's sexuality becomes a focus for keeping [women] in their place." For these women, learning to think like a lawyer means learning to think and act like a man. As one male professor told a first-year class, "to be a good lawyer, behave like a gentleman."[16]

Finally, we document substantial material consequences for those women who exit the Law School after sustaining what they describe as a crisis of identity. These women graduate with less competitive academic credentials, are not represented equally within the Law School's academic and social hierarchies, and are apparently less competitive in securing prestigious and/or desirable jobs after graduation.(17)

We propose three related hypotheses to explain our primary empirical finding, which is that men outperform women at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Our research suggests that (1) many women feel excluded from the formal educational structure of the Law School; (2) many women are excluded from the informal educational environment; and (3) some women are individually affected by the gendered stratification within the Law School, in terms of potentially adverse psychological consequences and more limited employment opportunities. We believe that our data documenting the differing experiences of male and female law students offer an opportunity to reconsider the educational project of law school. Although some have said in response to our data that perhaps women are not suited to law school or should simply learn to adapt better to its rigors, we are inclined to believe that it is law school - not the women - that should change.(18) Indeed, changes to the existing structure of the law school might improve the quality of legal education for all students.

This Article reports our empirical findings, assesses them in the context of studies of women at other law schools, and suggests several ways to place our findings within the ongoing debate about individual assimilation into hostile, elite, and previously all-male organizations. Further, this Article indicates directions for future research and identifies the potential for transforming legal education's principal pedagogy and assumptions about hierarchy in order to train and support the needs of all students.

1. THREE WINDOWS INTO THE LAW SCHOOL

   1. Methodologies

      In April 1990, a third-year law student at the University of Pennsylvania Law School surveyed the school's full population of 712 students about their views of gender and the law school experience.(19) Questionnaires were placed in the mail folders of every first-, second-, and third-year student. Of the 366 students who responded, 174, or 47.5%, identified themselves as female (compared to 41% then enrolled at the Law School), and the remaining 192, or 52.5%, identified themselves as male. The responses of female and male Penn Law students were compared across the first, second, and third years of law school and used to investigate anecdotal observations by several female law students about stigmatization, harassment, and general malaise related to their gender.(20)

      The survey consisted of a multiple-choice questionnaire and one open-ended question designed to elicit narrative responses. One hundred four of the 366 respondents answered the open-ended question. The data, analyzed by gender and year in law school, revealed significant gendered attitudes and beliefs among the respondents, who constituted 51% of the men and women enrolled at the Law School in 1990.

      Intrigued by the initial results, we set up a multiple-method research design to assess the comparative status of women and men when they enter, as they participate in, and when they leave law school. Our three-part research design investigated gender-related differences in levels of academic performance, law student attitudes toward career goals, and general satisfaction with law school experiences.

      The Bartow cross-sectional survey of 366 law students formed the initial database, analyzed by gender and year in law school. This database was not longitudinal and was affected by a selectivity bias.(21) The Bartow Survey represents the attitudes and experiences of a little over half (366 out of 712) of the men and women enrolled at the Law School in 1990. Discovering significantly gendered attitudes and beliefs, we sought to analyze student performance data.

      Our second database comprised a quantitative cohort analysis of the academic performance of 981 students at the Law School.(22) This database was longitudinal and was designed to determine the relationship, if any, along gender lines between incoming credentials and law student academic performance. The second database began in 1990 as an archival cohort study of the 712 students then enrolled in the Law School. With the full cooperation of Colin Diver, Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, we subsequently analyzed performance data for all students enrolled at the Law School during the academic year ending June 1991, in order to confirm our initial findings. As a result, we collected and analyzed performance data for a total of 981 students, 712 of whom were enrolled at the time of the 1990 Bartow Survey, and 366 of whom submitted responses to her survey. We have the full academic performance data for the classes of 1990 and 1991, the first two years of law school for the class of 1992, and the first year of law school for the class of 1993.

      The Law School furnished us with an anonymous listing for each of the 981 students, including gender, race, undergraduate grade point average (GPA), Law School Admission Test (LSAT) score, undergraduate institution, undergraduate rank, and law school GPA for each year in law school. We did not receive information about size of individual law classes, gender of the professor, or type of examination. We did not examine, therefore, possible correlations between these variables and student performance by gender. These areas of study may prove fruitful for future research.

      Finally, in order to generate more detailed hypotheses regarding the gendered experiences of law school as suggested by the quantitative survey and academic performance data, we created a third, qualitative database. Qualitative data have become central to the work of social scientists, enabling them to produce more valid explanations of social life by checking their own assumptions and biases against the perspectives and understandings of the researched populations or subjects.(23) Our qualitative data include the 104 narrative responses to the open-ended question about student experiences of gender discrimination in the Bartow Survey,(24) focus group data collected from twenty-seven students (including white students and students of color, both male and female),(25) our observation of and participation with two classes of a critical perspectives seminar,(26) a meeting with the Women's Law Group,(27) and several meetings with Law School...