Full text of her 11/17/05 lecture here. A couple of excerpts below:
…”Last year, a working group of Harvard Law students issued a study on women’s experiences. What they discovered closely tracked findings from other top schools that have studied these questions: While women and men arrive at law school with basically the same credentials, there’s a real difference in how they experience their three years of legal study.
“Most troubling are disparities in the academic arena in major law schools. Women law students are less likely to speak up in class. They graduate with fewer honors. And when asked to assess their own abilities, they give themselves far lower marks than men do on a range of legal skills. Here’s an interesting statistic: according to the Harvard student survey, 33% of men considered themselves in the top 20% of their class in legal reasoning while only 15% of women did. Women also gave themselves lower marks in their ability to”think quickly on their feet, argue orally, write briefs, and persuade others.”Reading this list, I had to shake my head: What exactly is left? Studies at other schools have found very similar trends. In the disturbing words of one female law student from the University of Pennsylvania:”Guys think law school is hard, and we just think we’re stupid.”…
“The Center for Work-Life Policy study found that only 20% of highly qualified female lawyers singled out”a powerful position”as a very important career goal. Now to me this finding raises a red flag. Do women care so little about having an impact? About finding ways to bring their considerable talents to bear on the world’s problems? I just don’t believe it. I think women express themselves in this way only because in our society the concept of power unfortunately has become disconnected from the goal of improving our society. In any event, you see the general point I’m making: Women’s actual choices and stated preferences are crucially important, but it makes sense also to look behind them and ask what kinds of workplace and other conditions they are reflecting. …
“Women are what my colleague Professor Lani Guinier calls a”miner’s canary”:an allusion to the bird that alerted miners to toxins in the air. They are a group whose greater vulnerability to certain conditions signals the dangers of those conditions for the whole population.” …
