Glass ceiling
Over at Pundit Mom, guest blogger Lawyer Mama has a fantastic post on discrimination against lawyer mothers with a jaw-dropping example of her own. Obviously I can’t give any examples of this from where I currently work because, of course, there are none to give (love you, paycheck writers potentially reading my blog 
). However, I can surely give a example of the effects of working in a “boy’s club” from one of my former jobs.
I don’t know her motivation, nor do I really think this was encouraged by her colleagues, but I worked at a firm where a female partner got pregnant (yes, partner, which is why this is so weird). She absolutely REFUSED to admit to anyone in the firm or outside the firm that she was pregnant, despite her growing belly. She told her secretary not to mention it to anyone, especially during her maternity leave. That “leave” was four days. She was on her blackberry with both clients and partners throughout labor, just mentioning it as an aside to the managing partner, and was back to work right away. The firm was actually really family-friendly so the partners comments weren’t “go girl!” but “what the hell is wrong with her?!?” I still don’t know. I didn’t work directly for her, but it was so odd and I often wonder if she’d worked so hard to make it to where she was that she only knew one set of rules to play by. 
August 7th, 2007 at 9:50 am
I wouldn’t have understood that female partner until I was a solo and about to give birth (unexpectedly early) — I had all these people counting on me and I was going AWOL. At least that’s how it felt — there was a trial set for three days after Eden was born, and another the next week. I did make calls and write emails from the hospital, and even signed a request for a set over within an hour of giving birth (friends brought me the form and I signed it still in the delivery room — they filled it out for me!).
My perinatalogists were not amused.
It’s not like I worked hard in the first month of Eden being home, but I did answer phone calls from my remaining clients (I’d stopped taking new ones in November and Eden was born in June) and would deal with mail as it came in. It really felt that if I didn’t, I would let all those people down.
(But I don’t get the hiding it from people — that’s just weird.)
August 7th, 2007 at 10:08 am
Shelley, that makes so much sense. I need to watch my stone-throwing self and think about it from others’ perspectives. It just seemed so *wrong* at the time and so destructive to other women at the firm in terms of raising the bar. But she was a litigator and she may have honestly thought no one could fill her shoes while she took some time for herself. Thanks for your comment!
August 7th, 2007 at 11:23 am
Like Shelley, I can see why she did it. It’s actually harder to take extended leave once you’re a partner because you can lose clients. But it sounds like she took that to extremes! I know a few (sad that it’s only a few) female partners who have had children while they were partners and both did just fine having their secretaries check email and voice mail and help them respond to clients when necessary. One did come back from leave a month early because of an upcoming trial, but 4 days??? Wowser!