Class Action

"Women Lawyers Blog for Workplace Equality: Blogging as a Feminist Legal Method"

By Kimberly A. Kralowec

Here is an excerpt from the introduction of an article recently posted on SSRN:

Based on a detailed, empirical analysis of women lawyers in law firms, this Comment argues that, similar to Ellickson?s cattle ranchers and Bernstein?s diamond traders, a growing number of women lawyers in law firms have developed their own methods of rights assertion. They have rejected the law as a viable means of personal advocacy and are instead, using blogging?an alternative, informal and impersonal form of engagement?to advocate for their rights and interests in the workplace. One would expect that women lawyers, when confronted with unfair hiring practices, unequal pay, or unjust choices, would turn to the legal system. They are legally trained and undoubtedly immersed in the law, and therefore, one might presume that they are particularly attentive to legal rights and predisposed to think of personal grievances in a legal framework. Nonetheless, a growing group of women lawyers are using the Internet?and, in particular, blogging?to resolve their disputes, address their personal grievances, challenge implicit male bias engrained in the profession, and share and obtain the information they need to become stronger bargainers in the workplace. For a variety of reasons, these women have found it effective and rewarding to use blogging?and not traditional legal and legislative avenues?to advocate for their own personal rights in the workplace and to openly challenge ?the rules under which success is defined and the structures that continue to reinforce men?s dominance? in the legal profession.

Alison I. Stein, "Women Lawyers Blog for Workplace Equality: Blogging as a Feminist Legal Method" (March 24, 2008). The article relies heavily on the blog Ms. JD and cites other articles with interesting titles, including Jill Filipovic, Blogging While Female: How Internet Misogyny Parallels ?Real-World? Harassment, 19 YALE J.L. & FEMINISM 295 (2007) and Rosa Brooks, What the Internet Age Means for Female Scholars, 116 YALE L.J. POCKET PART 46 (2006).

[Via Legal Blog Watch and Feminist Law Professors]

Full post as published by The UCL Practitioner on April 13, 2008 (boomark / email).