https://www.lawyersclubsandiego.com/
We are no longer accepting submissions, however, Blog Archives can be accessed below. The opinions expressed in entries in the LC Blog are those of the author, not of Lawyers Club of San Diego.
I am saddened and frustrated to be writing yet again about another attack on women’s reproductive rights.
A big part of the reason why we work to elevate women is so they have choices and control over their personal and financial future.
Yesterday – nine months into the year – was #NativeWomensEqualPayDay. This means that Native American women had to work until September 8, 2021, to earn what their white, non-Hispanic male colleagues earned on average in 2020—that is 60 cents for every dollar. This equates to more than $24,000 per year and $1 million over a 40-year career.
On Wednesday, September 1, 2021, in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, 594 U.S. ____ (2021), the U.S. Supreme Court declined to act on an emergency request to stop Senate Bill 8 (S.B. 8), effectively ending Roe v. Wade in the state of Texas.
The devastating situation in Afghanistan has underscored the risk of harm that Afghan women attorneys, judges, journalists, and women’s rights advocates have always faced.1 Despite those risks, these women worked from within to advance women’s rights in Afghanistan. And their advocacy worked: during the prior Taliban regime that fell 20 years ago, there were no women judges in Afghanistan.2 Today, there are approximately 270.
Like many of you, I have been consumed by thoughts of the disturbing human rights situation currently unfolding in Afghanistan. I have read many stories of professional women—attorneys, judges, journalists, women’s rights advocates, and other professionals—who are now at risk of being killed, tortured, or imprisoned. There are approximately 270 women judges in Afghanistan, many of whom are now in the process of burning records of their decades-long careers in order to avoid imprisonment or death.1
During three grueling years of law school and about $160,000 in student loans later, no one taught the art of salary negotiations or even mentioned that it would be a skill essential to my career. So as a second-year associate in a large San Diego law firm, I had no idea that I could, or more importantly, should, ask for a raise. In fact, a few of my female colleagues told me that asking for a raise was not worth it.
Although the Stonewall Uprising that led to the gay rights movement occurred in 1969, it was not until 44 years later that the first Asian-American member of the LGBQ+ community was confirmed to be an Article III judge. Judge Pamela Chen, a woman, a lesbian, was appointed in 2013.
Best practices geared towards standardizing processes are more likely to be in place in evaluating candidates at the hiring stage, but these need to be expanded and entrenched later in the career cycle, when considering attorneys for assignments and promotions.
Yesterday we held an Equal Pay Rally to raise awareness that the average woman finally earned the same dollar men earned by December 31, 2020—in other words the average woman had to work 15 months for the same dollar men earned in just 12 months. A breakdown by ethnicity reveals that March 24 does not capture a diverse group of women. Asian American women, the first women to earn the dollar, did so on March 9 after working 15 months—African American women will work 20 months, Native American women will work 21 months and Latinx women will work 22 months.
