By Laurel Bellows
We are the most effective generation of womankind ever-that is, if “effectiveness” is measured in terms of confronting legal issues involving women. But if women’s accomplishments are weighed against actually achieving equality of opportunity, freedom from violence, and fairness in matters concerning gender, our effectiveness is a blip on the achievement chart for the one hundred thousand generations of women that have walked upright. I fear that what we have accomplished will create a false sense that inequity will disappear, when what we have done is picked low-hanging fruit. So, if the past is prologue, the legal issues that face women today will still be present, and critical, a generation hence.
Women’s advocacy is grounded on moral principles that we ask others to embrace. We speak of women’s rights as human rights that are unalienable. Our advocacy is an attempt to enlist others to do the right thing for the sake of the right thing, like granting suffrage. But, try as we may, these principles are neither universally recognized nor given priority.
We learned that framing issues not as women’s issues but as society’s issues attracts an audience and believers. Our successes most often arise when we have others tune in to their favorite radio station, WIIFM (What’s In It For Me). When that happens, women are able to lower barriers or favorably resolve legal issues, even where female factors predominate. For example, after decades of failing to fund research for breast cancer, money was allocated only after the epidemic was cast as a public health issue that affects all Americans, not just women. De-emphasizing the connection between women and breast cancer is not a principled approach; but, when arguments are based solely on ideals, the past is prologue.
We crafted similar messages that resonated in favor of change. Diversity is rightfully touted as good for business; same for including a woman’s perspective in the boardroom and C suites of corporate America. Making credit available for women entrepreneurs provides jobs, stimulates the economy, and on a micro level feeds families and educates children. Law firms retain senior women lawyers to meet expectations of women general counsel. Quality of life for professional women redounds favorably for a better quality of life for male peers. When interested parties are convinced that change advantages society, rather than only women, we make progress toward equality. Philosophically, this is troubling.
Here’s the dilemma: Until women obtain broad recognition for their ideals, they must continue to be manipulators of the public interest argument to obtain fairness. But only so much progress can be made spinning women’s issues as public interest issues. And there are issues for which WIIFM is not available, e.g., issues that solely belong to women and fights that benefit women alone. In many instances, the game is zero sum, and gains for women come at the expense of men: The more women who find berths at the top, the fewer positions that will be available for men.
What can we do to see to it that the past is not to be prologue? How do we deal with the limitations of idealism? How can we enlist others to join the cause of gender equality when equality is fearsome to so many? We need to address the fact that both men and women fear equality, but for different reasons. Women fear economic independence; fear losing the ability to depend on men for support; fear that they will lose custody of children. Men fear they will lose their jobs to women; fear that their place as senior executives, and as heads of household, is in jeopardy. Women and men fear sending their daughters to war.
The real question, the critical issue for the next 20 years, is straightforward: Can men and women ever move past the fear of being equal?
Laurel Bellows is a principal of Bellows and Bellows, P.C., in Chicago. She represents executives involved in negotiating employment contracts, separation agreements, and related employment disputes, and she writes and lectures nationally on topics related to negotiation skills, business, and investment litigation. Bellows is chair of the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates, a past president of the National Conference of Bar Presidents, and a former chair of the Commission on Women in the Profession (1994-1997). She was the second woman president of the 22,000 member Chicago Bar Association in 1991.
Published in Perspectives, Volume 17, Number 1, Summer 2008. © 2008 by the American Bar Association.
