An Investigation of Gender and Sexuality in the Workplace

            In today's society, we are ostensibly committed to the idea that women are as well-suited to any job as men are, and the law, through the Civil Rights Act of 1964, theoretically guarantees that women must not be discriminated against in hiring and promotional decisions by employers. Of course, this ideal of gender equality has not been fully realized in America-where women's income represents about 80% of what men earn-and it is in fact in the field of law, in our nation's largest law firms, that gender disparities are some of the most egregious. 

             According to the figures put forth on the Building a Better Legal Profession website, women represent half of all entry-level associates in the largest law firms, while they make up only 13% of equity partners. What's worse, as Above the Law observed, is that it was not until this year that a woman has been made a name partner at an AmLaw 100 firm. Indeed, it was during this past month that Kathleen Sullivan, former Dean of Stanford Law School, became the "Sullivan" of Quinn, Emanuel, Urquhart & Sullivan, where she is one of 23 female partners. According to the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) Directory of Legal Employers, that puts her in an 18% minority of the partners at the firm Ms. Sullivan now claims 25% of the name of.

            Sullivan's achievement seems even more extraordinary when one considers that she is openly gay. Unlike gender, discrimination based on sexual orientation is not prohibited by law on the national level, with only certain states and institutions requiring equal employment opportunities for open members of the LGBT community. While the National Gay and *** Task Force approximates that up to 8% of the American population is gay, Business Insider found in their most recent survey of the best law firms for LGBT attorneys that "most firms are well below the 2% point" in their representation of LGBT employees.

            In spite of this, Ms. Sullivan may not be as alone at the top as we might initially suspect: of the 23 female partners at Quinn Emanuel, three are listed on NALP as openly ***. In other words, 13% of female partners at Quinn Emanuel are-like Sullivan-openly gay, exceeding even the National Gay and *** Task Force's liberal expectation of *** representation. Of course, the number of women in this sample is quite small, giving the presence of even one openly gay woman a substantial impact on the proportions in question. Just the same, the adversity faced by any woman-let alone an LGBT woman-in reaching the top of the legal profession is clearly significant and often underappreciated. This report seeks to at least briefly elucidate the compounded challenges and extraordinary circumstances faced by out, *** women in the legal profession.