Law School News

• Citation: Vol. 38 No. 2 Pg. 46
• Publication year: 2015
• Pages: 46
• Year: 2015
• topic: Employment Law

Law School News Vol. 38 No. 2 Pg. 46 Wyoming Bar Journal April, 2015

Jacquelyn L. Bridgeman Interim Dean and Kepler Professor of Law University of Wyoming College of Law .

Equality in the Equality State?

This month’s issue of the Wyoming Lawyer focuses on women. As the first female dean in the University of Wyoming College of Law’s 95 year history, it seems fitting that I focus this column on women as well. Fitting, perhaps, but not necessarily easy. Writing this article has not been easy because there is a significant part of me that wants to focus on all of the wonderful, talented, successful women who are alumna of the College of Law. In so doing I would like to tell a story of progress and sustained success within a state that truly should be called the Equality State. I initially wanted that to be the focus of this column, but I found that story difficult to write because I believe we have room to grow. It has taken us 95 years to have a woman at the helm of the College of Law and I preside over a school that has had only one year, the class of 2012, in which female graduates exceeded male graduates. This is so despite the fact that more women currently apply to law school than do men.^[1] Our college exists within a university that has never had a female president and that has had few female members of the board of trustees.

Wyoming earned the nickname “the Equality State” because we were the first state to let women vote, the first to elect a female governor, and the first to have a woman serve as a Justice of the Peace. Yet, we have not had a female governor since 1927, we have had only two female Supreme Court Justices, two female United States Representatives, no female United States Senators and only one female state Attorney General. With statistics like these it might be easy to draw the conclusion that perhaps Wyoming has lost its commitment and focus on equality. But I do not know that it would be fair to draw such a conclusion, because these kinds of problems are always complex and their causes multivariate.

For example, the College of Law statistics regarding female enrollees might suggest that we do not value gender diversity. Yet, the enrollment statistics do not tell you that our male applicants tend to exceed our female applicants nearly 2 to 1 in any given year. They do not tell you that we admit a much higher percentage of the women who apply as compared to men and we offer many of the women we admit substantial...