Susan Estrich It’s time for professional women to speak up Susan Estrich is a nationally syndicated columnist.
“Click,” we used to call it, that moment when you realized that something was very wrong and, even more important, that it didn’t have to be that way. It was the feminist moment when you understood that genitals have nothing to do, or shouldn’t, with being a doctor or a lawyer or an Indian chief — or a professor or president — that these are things that women can do just as well, that the reason there is only one slot for a woman and it’s already taken is not because the clients prefer men (even if they do), but because the firm is indulging a preference that it should be ignoring, because the clients themselves are discriminating, because this is the way it was, not the way it needs to be, or will be. My years in law school, my years in politics, my early years in academia were full of click moments. Sorry, but the justice doesn’t hire women. Click. Sorry, but there aren’t any women partners. Click. This club is for men only. Click. I started keeping lists and keeping track of the lists other people kept — lists of the number of women columnists and commentators and talk show hosts, lists of the number of women partners and presidents, lists of the number of women on boards and panels. I’d write columns screaming bloody murder. I lost friends and influenced people. I thought we could make change happen. The other day I saw a list of panelists at an important conference. All men. All white men. Did anyone protest? Did anyone even notice? It happens all the time. Four men here and three men there. Three new board members and they’re all men. A new chair and he’s a man. A new CEO and he’s a man. The members of the panel were x and y and z and q, and no one even points out what they had in common: four white guys. Was there no woman qualified to be on that panel, I think to myself. And then I wonder: Am I the only one still thinking that? Does anyone even notice anymore? What happened to the clicks? Have we gotten so used to living without them that we have come to take for granted the exclusion we once would have protested? I was asked to give a speech recently for a women’s group that I spoke to about eight years ago. “What would you like?” I asked their leaders, in the conference call we often have before such events. What you did eight years ago would be good, they said to me. What I did eight years ago was chapter and verse on how underrepresented women were in the ranks of power in every business, profession and institution; on how few women were running Fortune 500 companies; on how we had stalled in our march to take over boardrooms and how we had the power to restart the revolution, break out of the holding pattern, if we used our voices and our money and our power to act. Eight years later I pulled the same numbers, and they were almost exactly the same. Or worse. According to the latest figures from Catalyst, which does various counts every year in the hopes that exposing the numbers of women in leadership positions will expand them, the number of Fortune 500 corporate officer positions held by women has actually decreased from 2002 to 2007. The percentage of board seats seems to have topped out at 14.8 percent; three years ago it was 14.7 percent. This is not progress. This year, 97.5 percent of the CEOs are men; for my speech eight years ago, as I recall, it was just over 98 percent. Too bad I threw away the old draft. Among top earners, 93.3 percent are men; when I first started following the numbers, it was just over 95 percent. Excuse me while I yawn. I understand that not every woman aspires to run a company or make partner or run the world. But power matters, too, not only for the women seeking it, but for the rest of us who work for them or are affected, directly and indirectly, by the decisions they make. I understand that there are more important things in life than having a show or a column or a fancy title. But it matters whose voice gets heard and whose doesn’t. It matters who has a megaphone and who has the power to hire and fire and make the rules we all live by. What stuns me is not how little has changed, but how few people even seem to notice anymore. What about those clicks? It’s time for a revolution — a noisy one.
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Rene
July 17, 2008, 8:39am
Guest User
Hmmmm, need to digest that one before making comment
I am speaking from "My own" personal experiences here. I have had both men and women as my superiors and in "My experience", I would prefer to work for a man.
What stuns me is not how little has changed, but how few people even seem to notice anymore. What about those clicks? It’s time for a revolution — a noisy one
are the 'clicks' the sound of high heels????? maybe it's the sound of folks 'clicking' off the tv when Hillary comes on........or maybe it's the sound of folks 'clicking' their tv off when "The Girls Next Door" comes on...........
gee-----let's weigh that one out.......
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Women have strengths that men could never possess and the same goes for the men. I don't believe that this is about equality. It is about choices. And today women are the ones with more choices than men could ever have, just by being a women. Example: If a woman gets pregnant and doesn't want to have it, she can 'choose' an abortion. Now this unborn baby also has a father. But he has no say in the matter what so ever on whether he would like to keep 'his' child or not. And I'm not talking about the one night stand sex flings, where two people barely know each other's first names. This has happened in marriages between husbands and wives. Now that is a strength, right or choice no man will ever possess!!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
As you know I have been in business myself since I was about 22 years old. I do not recall a single case of feeling I did or did not make an insurance sale because of my gender. I have worked primarily with School Administrators and teachers across western NY. I have never given much thought to the subject really. I have always assumed I am equal to the person in front of me, expected equal treatment, and received it. I never considered the fact that I am a woman being a reason for success or failure. I am afraid there are many women out there that use their gender as a crutch and a reason for their own shortcomings.
And I am afraid that women use it to advance themselves as well!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
You betcha!!! Whatever it takes......within reason. Seriously though, when I spent several weeks working to bring together a large sale, drove 10 hours to and from Buffalo only to lose it, I never once thought it was because I was a woman. I always felt it was because I did not get my point across, make myself clear, and quite simply I failed. The 5 hours home provided enough time to figure out where I screwed up and fix it for next time.
maybe you can sue someone reguardless Miss Rene, there are lawyers who specialize in getting mnoney out of poeople when there is a woman wornged or when she thought she was wronged and all that
After reading Susan Estrich’s July 17 column, “It’s time for professional women to speak up,” I realized I was not alone in my thoughts. In the early 1970s I remember going for job interviews and being told they wouldn’t hire me because they didn’t want to waste the time training me because I was soon getting married and, that after I had been married for enough time I would probably be having a baby — events that would cause me to quit my job. I also remember being told that they didn’t hire women, that I would be unable to accomplish aspects of the job, and that they promoted someone else (a man) because unlike me, he was supporting a family and needed the extra money. In the ’80s, I remember talking about women’s rights to an older teen who, never having experienced any of these things, didn’t understand what the big deal was or why she would want to be entitled to do a “man’s” job anyway — talk about “click!” I think Susan is right: Does anyone even notice anymore? Pregnant women used to be forced to leave jobs either at seven months or when they began to “show” because it didn’t look good for pregnant women to be working; men used to “let” their wives work (or not); women didn’t own their own credit (it belonged to their husbands); and if you weren’t married you would be lucky to get credit at all. I guess with the improvements, people just don’t notice that things have stalled. And if you look at history, women got the right to vote, which led to a few other rights and privileges in the 1920s, and then things just coasted along for another 40 years until the ’60s, when people started noticing things — “click” — and then the Equal Pay Act, Civil Rights Act, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and affi rmative action. Things roll forward into the ’70s, and we have the feminist movement, Title IX, Roe vs. Wade and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. I guess we’re coasting again and about to hit the 40-year mark, in 2010. Maybe people will start to hear it again — “click! click! click!” DEBBY POULTON Rotterdam
Women need to expect more from themselves. Need to command respect in order to receive it. I think it could be women themselves who have become complacent.
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Seriously though, when I spent several weeks working to bring together a large sale, drove 10 hours to and from Buffalo only to lose it, I never once thought it was because I was a woman. I always felt it was because I did not get my point across, make myself clear, and quite simply I failed. The 5 hours home provided enough time to figure out where I screwed up and fix it for next time.
