Let me know when you see Michael Richards' picture on Los Angeles tourism shirts, okay?
In any event, women are truly best viewed as an oppressed minority, particularly in these harsh, absurd times when our nation just elected C. Montgomery
Just as certain law schools cater more towards other types of oppressed minorities, those same law schools, it seems, also disproportionately provide access for young women to pursue their legal dreams.
More women are attending law school, but their numbers at top-ranked institutions aren’t keeping up the pace, a recent study found. While women make up roughly half of all law students at ABA-accredited schools, they are overrepresented at lower-ranked schools.This is exactly how market capitalism works. "Higher ranked" law schools aren't doing their job to meet the demand for female law students. "Lower ranked" law schools fill the gaping void and produce enough female candidates that a handful of 8/10s pass the bar and fill BigLaw's needs.
Yet the study's disreputable authors believe this is somehow a bad thing. Unfortunately, some people just don't want to see women advance in the workplace. N*****s of the world, indeed; if people like Kyle McEntee and Deborah Merritt had their way, the proverbial glass ceiling would be constantly dirtied as a courtesy so the stupid bitches trapped under it would have something to Windex like the house slaves they are.
Thank heavens institutions of higher learning don't subscribe to this discriminatory reasoning.
The one redeeming point of this travesty of an article is that it reaffirms that the LSAT reinforces racial and gender stratification in the legal profession and should be abolished permanently in favor of a more holistic, admit-whoever-we-want approach:
Schools focus admissions on candidates with the highest possible LSAT scores, the authors write, and women on average score lower than men on the test’s multiple-choice questions...The only absurdity here is that lower-tiered law schools are being criticized for helping improve gender diversity in the legal profession. It's clear, however, that the only rational course is to continue to let so-called "lower tier" law schools hook up with willing women, particularly those still physically able to sign the student loan paperwork, but frankly those knocked orgasmically unconscious by the spank-me fantasy of the Million Dollar JD will do just fine as well.
Because legal education shouldn't depend on what's hanging between your legs, be it a stubby wiener, hypertrophic labia, or a mysterious piece of now-amorphous flesh that's been decaying since the mob buried you in 1986. If Uncle Sam wants to cut you a check, you should have the right to learn The Law wherever they're willing to add your name to the spreadsheet.
The article is indeed a travesty. We're told that "women on average score lower than men on" the LSAT, but no evidence is given for that claim, nor is the alleged difference in scores given—in an article otherwise bristling with citations.
ReplyDeleteTo assess the authors' claim, we would need to know:
* That indeed women get lower scores on average
* How much lower their scores are
* Whether the difference is statistically significant
* What explains it
The authors inappropriately assume bias from the mere allegation of a difference in scores.
And inputs. Imagine if (if!) women in fact scored lower despite higher GPAs because the males who apply to law school are disproportionately represented in the STEM fields, where the GPA/aptitude ratio is far lower than it is in the humanities or "softer" fields.
ReplyDeleteIn the research summary of their study, Merritt and McEntee complain that women account for 49.4% of all JD students at ABA-accredited law schools. This is slightly below what might be anticipated in that 57.1% of college degrees go to women.
ReplyDeleteThe research summary then poses the following questions: "Why aren’t women more interested in applying to law school?. . . . Are law schools doing as much as they could to make law school attractive to women? To reach out to women?"
I won't necessarily challenge their subsequent complaint about the relative lack of gender balance at elite schools (aka those with "particularly strong" placement rates). Although at 46.6% female, even these are not exactly displaying a pattern of blatant exclusion.
However, McEntee and Merritt also want even run-of-the mill law schools to devote more effort to recruiting female students.
It is extremely disappointing that McEntee and Merritt recommend more law school recruitment outreach, even in the context of a plea for gender balance. Both are fully aware that law school is a massively overpriced debt trap with extremely shaky career prospects, and a high level of professional dissatisfaction.
Suppose it were shown that more males than females drive over the edge of cliffs. Does that provoke the question of whether enough is being done to make driving over cliffs attractive to women?