Women Law Students: Still Not Equal

January 5th, 2020 / By Deborah J. Merritt

The Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE) released its annual report just before the holiday break. This year’s report, titled “The Cost of Women’s Success,” explores the gendered nature of law students’ experience.

I had the honor of contributing a Foreword to the LSSSE report. Summing up the report’s findings, I wrote:

Two law students, a woman and a man, sit side-by-side in class. From the podium, they look similar: both concentrate intently on the professor, take notes, and listen to classmates’ comments. But, as this LSSSE report reveals, their broader law school experiences likely diverge in meaningful ways.

The man is more likely to have a parent who was a lawyer; he is also more likely to have a parent who attended college. When the professor pauses for questions, the man is more likely to raise his hand. If the man and women are Latinx, the gender difference in classroom participation will be particularly stark.

After class, the man is more likely to exercise, read for pleasure, and pursue other leisure activities. The woman is more likely to attend a student organization meeting, email a professor, or speak to an advisor about her career plans.

At the end of the day, the woman is less likely than the man to get a full night’s sleep: half of LSSSE’s women respondents report that they average no more than five hours of sleep a night. And when the woman wakes to face another demanding day, she is less likely to find institutional support for her burdens.

Nor do the woman’s challenges end with graduation. She is more likely than the man to shoulder high debt as she enters the workplace. Those differences, like others noted in this report, sharpen at the intersection of gender and race. Sixteen percent of Latinas borrow more than $200,000 to attend law school, compared to 12% of Latinos and 4.3% of White men.

Despite these differences, women succeed in law school. Among LSSSE respondents, women’s reported grades exceeded those of men. That was true for women overall, as well as within each racial or ethnic group. As the report’s title suggests, however, women succeed at a cost: less sleep, fewer wellness activities, and more debt.

In this new year, law schools need to look more deeply at the gender differences that color our students’ experience. Those of us who stand at the podium (faculty and administrators) see the equal numbers of men and women sitting before us. We pride ourselves on that equity without probing below the surface. Feminist scholars, including some student authors, have continued to illuminate the gendered nature of legal education. Now LSSSE adds to that literature through the voices of more than 18,000 law students.