Women in the Judiciary -- Notes

Reserve Reading

-state judges always seen as older, white males either kind or stern

-attourneys before judges

-courts provide one of the most frequent connections between people and government

-courts effect everyday law and gender bias

-viewed as defending minorities and women, both civil rights and women movements went to the courts

-judges can only make decisions on cases that are brought before them and are expected to be impartial but who the judge is can still affect the outcome

-argue that judge benches should be diverse to represent diverse ideas

-Margaret Brent = first known woman practicing law in US in Maryland colonies in around 1638

-didn't marry, held land, 124 cases, referred to as gentleman Margaret Brent

-Lusy Terry Prince = first woman to address Supreme court

-women abolitionists linked to law and then suffrage

-many in west viewed women equally from the start of fronteir life

-first women practice law as profession in Iowa in 1869

-Belle Babb Mansfield also from Iowa = first recognized attorney

-Myra Colby Bradwell denied practicing law in Chicago after passing the bar and brought it to Supreme Court but she lost 8 -1
-Justice Bradley wrote the one concurrent view
-1882: Illinois let women be admitted to the bar but it was a state by state battle, with Georgia as the last state in 1916
-Equity Club = first national org for women lawyers in 1886
-Belva Lockwood = part who was 1st wmn to practice before Supreme Court
-1890: Equity Club disbanded with only 280 wmn practicing in the country
-Before 70's most women lawyers worked for the gov or for family issues
-women's mvement helped female law students as did depletion of men during vietnam
-1971: wmn = 9.4% of law students. 1981: wmn = 35.8%
-Now women make up 49% of law students
-2002: wmn = 29% of lawyers, more in gov then men but only 14.5% of partners in law firms
-wmn lawyers make less money and still suffer gender discrimination
-Esther Morris = 1st wmn as jurist in 1869: part time justice of peace
-Carrie Burnham Kilgore, 1st female grad of U of PA Law School appointed master in chancery in 1886
-Georgia Bullock on LA wmn court made for women to judge wmn and then moved up to superior court in LA in 1932
-Florence Allen = 1st wmn on federal bench in 1934 on US Court of Appeals
-Burnita Shelton Matthews in district court for DC by Pres Truman in 1949, worked with wmns parties after starting her own law practice and introduced original test for ERA
-Matthews only hire women as her law clerks
-Sarah Hughes appointed by JFK in 1961 + she swore in Johnson after JFK was assasinated
-Carter appointed 40 wmn to federal bench by looking at a wider range of candidates
-Reagan only 7.5% wmn while Carter 14.4% but then Bush 1 had 19.6% and clinton went to 28.5
-reagan focused on ideology while Clinton focused on diversity in judges
-George W Bush had 26.5% wmn
-Reagan appointed O'Connor as 1st female Supreme Court judge in 1981
-1993: Clinton appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg to S.C.
-Jan 2005: wmn = 28% of justices on state courts
-15 wmn serve as chief justices out of 52 seats
-justices in states usually either appointed or elected
-26 states have judges appointed by elections
-one idea: appointing judges depresses diversity because they look at conventional backgrounds or they could be better for women because people would look at their backgrounds
-states happy even with minimal gender represenstation
-in election scandidates stress professional experience and phiolsophy not gender
-the bigger the court, the more likely to have female rep
-wmn more likely to be in public sector prior to being judges
-recent guesses that 22% of state judges = female
-still gender bias in appointment of judges at all levels, focus on their apperance and personl life
-Carol Gilligans book focuses on womens voices, how men and wmn differ
-men tended to view morality in terms of fairness, concerned about individual rights
-wmn focus on caretakinh and look more at responsibilities in larger community
-young boys are more focused on the rules then girls, boys = competition, girls = cooperation
-men look for answer in existing rules whil women look for solutions to maintain relationships
-scholars work to connect Gilligan's theory to judge rulings
-scholars looked at O'Connor to see if she ruled differently, some said she did write with feminine view
-some times O'Connor looked at teh context and community over the individual
-some argue that she compromises from past experience not gender
-all studies found minimal difference between men and women's voices in the court
-originally women were actually harder on women then men were
-more female judges come and some differences are found, more liekyl to find sex discrimination
-O'Connor and Ginsburg wrote half of the majority opinions on wmns rights areas during their time and voted together on wmns rights cases 90% of the time
-found bigger diverse in party then in gender in MI study
-98% of wmn rudges believed that wmn brought difference to the bench and influenced male collegues on gender issues and their sensitivity
-law school and practice make a specific way of thinking that isn't gender biased
-the little difference means that hudges tend to look at the issues more no matter what their background is
-wmn sometimes face discrimination in the actual court room as clerks or attourneys
-wmn judges and attourneys more aware of the gender discrimination than males
-lead most states to create Gender Bias Task Force and adopted education programs
-in 90's backlash against Task Force lead some to believe it was actually working
-female judges still report some gender discrimination

Governor Swift: A Cautionary Tale -- Reaction

Reserve Reading

Governor Swift is an inspiration. Reading about her story when she had her kids is really interesting, but I'm more interested in what she's doing now. Her kids are older, and we haven't discussed whether or not she's gotten back into politics. I think it's too bad if she just faded to the background. The government really should have made it easier on her by giving her a place near the capitol so she didn't have to drive all that way.

I also don't understand at all the problem with other people watching her daughter, as long as they weren't working or getting paid for it. I do understand that people wouldn't want their tax dollars going specifically to the childcare of one kid, but as long as the working people were on break or doing something else at the same time I don't see the problem, plenty of women and men do that when they don't have anything else to do with their kids. I remember sitting in my father's office building for hours as a girl with my sister, rummaging through the office fridge.

There is some merit behind the uproar when she cut down on welfare for women who might have been in a similar situation to her if she wasn't the governor. But since I don't actually know much about her policies, I can't say much on that subject. Most fo what we remember and learn about her are her babies, her pregnancy, and how she dealt with them rather then her actual issues. That right there is a major issue. Even history is biased.

Governor Swift: A Cautionary Tale -- Notes

Reserve Reading

-women enter politics 10 yrs later then men, after children
-Ost 1998, Swift was 33, gave birth to baby girl less then 3 weeks before MA elected her as lieutenant gov
-career had sharp ups and downs, Dec 2000 only 17% approval
-Used colleagues to babysit for her
-Bush named the Gov ambassador to Canada so Swift got the seat
-April 2001, she's gov + pregnant with twins due in may
-arranged for meetings on speaker phone from her hospital bed, one previous gov had done so from a jail
-read her reports in the long commute because there wasn't a govs house close to work
-two planes in 9/11 took off from Boston and she fought to make airport security national
-March 19, 2002 Swift announced she wasn't going to run for election
-When she was 6, Swift's father took her to campaign meetings
-Graduated from Trinity College in Hartford
-Ran for Senate at 24 without knowing what she was going to face
-In 1990 people wanted a change and a young woman was exactly that, her opponent helped her by making her look younger and insulting the fact that she was a deparment store clerk
-She won and became the youngest woman elected to state senate
-Swift was the 13th woman in MA state senate
-MA has a bad rep for electing women, only one as of 1998 in statewide office
-Almost won House of Reps in 1996
-Was made coordiantor of regional airports, and then state director of consumer affairs, then picked for lieutenant gov
-Pregnancy became a huge part of the campaign and Swift denied to answer many questions
-Swift found women were much more skeptical of her and her hardest voting block
-Had a c-section about 2 weeks before the vote, which they then won
-1998 huge Democratic year and yet they won as republicans
-affected appointment of public safety coordinator to Jane Perlov
-had huge responsibilities as lieutenant gov which was more then others would have done
-sometimes had people in the office babysit for her but she argued that it was because they were friends before she got elected
-helped women get places in the government, including head of judiciary
-Swift left it up to the democratic woman and Mitt Romney who won. She was too progressive for the main Republican party and MA was to against women

Different but Important -- Reaction

Reserve Reading

It's always incredible and inspiring to read about women who have made differences in your life, differences they you didn't even know about before. Barbara Mikulski is an extremely intense woman, which her writing reflects. She worked with the new women in 1992 to get them aquainted with Senate. This is one of the main differences between the women and the men, to the women it wasn't this huge competition. They had all gotten into Senate, and they should all try and be s successful as possible. Even though they didn't agree on ll their issues, they could come together on the ones they did agree on.

Coming together has actually always been one of the provblems with the women's movements because women themselves are so divided on different subjects. But there are also always the ones that everyone agrees on, like the fact that a stay at home woman, or man, should get the same tax deductions as a working spouse. The woman are working together, with male colleagues, to get work in the home recoginzed for the hard work that it is.

Mikulski started by giving a tutorial to all her democratic women colleagues and then she extended it to Republican women as well. There was some real work across party lines which is always good because it makes for a cohesive government.

Different But Important -- Notes

Reserve Reading
Barbara Mikulski

-old senate chamber, old architecture, then became supreme court room
-1992, year of wman, lots of new women, democratic majority in senate again
-"I was by myself, but I was never alone" -Mikulski (was only dem woman in congress before 92)
-Mikulski first elected 1986, first woman to be elected in her own right
-didn't want to be one of the boys, wanted to be part of the gang
-wasn't afraid of asking people for help and she did all her work
-got put on Appropriation and Education and Labor
-took a different route to politics, through community need not through a law firm
-convinced Barbara Boxer of CA to run because she could do more in Senate then house of reps
-Mikulski also wrote book with Oates about a woman in Senate
-provided new wmn with training sessions and even manuals for Senate, "wouldn't be every woman for herself"
-Told women to have defined principles, she had her own on a notecard that all her staff carried
-1996 Senate back Republican and Mikulski worked with women from both parties to ensure civility, all women were invited to her seminar
-Mikulski's supportive work was to help the women form their own ideas, not to make them conform to hers
-Olympia Snowe worked on getting helath care passed for women, Women's Helath Equity Act
-1997 National Cancer Institute decided that it was unnessecary for women under 50 to get mamograms based on a study from Canda which many experts discredited
-Snowe worked with Mikulski and other women to get the NCI to support screenings for under forty and it passed 98-0
-Mikulski worked with Repudblican Hutchinson on the Homemaker IRA to make the tax deductions for stay at home spouses the same $2,000 as it was for working spouses instead of the $250 they were getting
-Hutchinson-Mikulski Bill had huge support from all the Senate women and a number of organizations
-Women worked together on all types of things that weren't gender specific as well, they worked for agendas
-Mikulski worked with Susan Collins in making a petition drive to stop the Congress from adjourning on a plan with more healthcare cuts
-Snowe: "the success of women in Senate is often a result of collaborative work, which comes more naturally to them"
-make it very clear that women aren't homogenous
-many senators served in the house of reps together so they already had relationships that could help stop or pass a bill
-Blanche Lincoln: you gain respect by being respectful, gain colleagues by acting like colleagues
-Patty Murray: knew to pick which fights to get into and that giong with your conscience could hurt your politics
-Her soncience this tim elinked to Tailhook scandal: 1991 Tailhook Annual Symposium party 83 women and 7 men assaulted. Women had their clothes torn off by drunken, groping men
-After investigation: 119 navy + 21 marine officers referred for possible disciplinary action, but nothing ever happened, many of them promoted + allowed to retire
-women got together and challenged it as a group so she wasn't labeled by herself as a flamethrower, they didn't win but they were heard.

Excuse Me, Miss, but Are You a Member? -- Notes

The Male Culture of the Capitol

Reserve Reading

-expected challenges not outright patronizing sexism

-women never viewed as "members" by anyone, even if they are important people

-"You look at my lapel; you don't look at my clothes."

-lots of stories of police/security not noticing or believing that the women are who they say they are.

-women's bathroom is located farther away from the House floor then mens room and the "cloakroom" : "the most blatant expressions of prevailing male clubbiness"

-John Dingell fell asleep in the cloakroom with a blanket but none of the women would be able to do that because they would look so vulnerable.

-huge strides in the last 25 years in the feminist movement as seen by Lynn Schenk

-no restroom for female staffers near the floor of the House

-Sexism in Congress similar to national sexism 25 years ago

-Women can't use the gym because there are no bathrooms for them and they have to call in advance

-Don't let it get you down, every woman has one vote which "speaks for 575,000 people"

-more fairness is smaller groups of politicians

-Among democrats in around 1993, the women and minorities outnumbered the white men

-"Of the 11,363 members who have served in the United States Congress, only 163 have been women"

-identifying "good old boys", the way they treat women with language

-sometimes overt politeness is worse then rudeness, more social then colleague to colleague

-"Second class citizens" who worry about being treated equally treat others better

-stories that "pages" are given lists of people to not be caught in an elevator with

-also discrepancies in the club for congresspeoples spouses,

-husbands have to learn how to take the backseat, be where wives traditionally are

-wmn bonding making it easier to bond with men not being exclusive
-being a woman can sometimes be a benefit because you stand out
-some entering wmn see no discrimination, all the freshman are treated the same
-other wmn think its there and that the others just ignore it, very different views
-wmn have to work with men to get things accomplished because there aren't enough women to get it done on their won
-"group action is fine to a point, then you have to prove yourself"
-there have been huge strides especially when women and men work together
-women have been mentoring each other and men have mentored too some.