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Lauren Stiller Rikleen on the findings of the latest gender diversity research.

Throughout 2009, women have been the subject of articles and research findings that have focused on our changing roles in the workplace and our families. Yet, while we are certainly making an impact, there is very little good news.
The study that has perhaps received most attention is The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything. This in-depth study by the Center for American Progress details the fundamental social transformation resulting from the fact that women now comprise half of the US workforce. It highlights myriad ways in which institutions that historically relied on a mother being at home have not kept up with the fact that, increasingly, mum is now found in the workplace. School hours, medical appointments, service calls and a variety of other activities, continue to be structured around an outdated notion of women’s workday accessibility.
The Shriver Report also confirms the nagging pay disparity that exists at all levels in the workplace, which is further exacerbated by the ‘motherhood pay penalty’. Female lawyers understand this issue all too well. The disparities have led to an exodus of female partners, in frustration over continued significant pay gaps.
Further discouraging news could be found in the National Association of Women Lawyer’s (NAWL) 2009 National Survey on Retention and Promotion of Women in Law Firms. NAWL’s fourth annual survey, analysing data from the 200-largest US firms, reports that women continue to play “a surprisingly small role in the highest levels of law firm leadership, and continue to gain little ground in expanding the equity partner’s ranks”. The NAWL survey further states that nearly half of the largest firms in the country do not have women represented among their top-ten rainmakers, and only one-third report having one woman among their top ten. Not surprisingly, but of critical importance, firms that reported no women among their top rainmakers also demonstrated a greater compensation disparity between male and female partners. Concomitantly, those firms with three or four women among their top-ten rainmakers virtually eliminated their pay gap. That juxtaposing data speaks volumes.
Additional sobering news was recently reported by the Women’s Bar Association (WBA) of Massachusetts. In an analysis of thousands of lawyers listed in the database of the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers (BBO), the WBA study revealed that women are leaving the legal profession in greater numbers than men. Shockingly, women now make up nearly 60 per cent of those lawyers listed by the Commonwealth’s BBO as “inactive”.
Finally, a study in the American Economic Journal reported on a global trend in industrialised countries of declining happiness among women relative to men. The study, entitled The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness, also asks the following provocative question: Did men garner a disproportionate share of the benefits of the women’s movement?
This leads us back to The Shriver Report. In the study’s preface, report author Maria Shriver noted that, throughout interviews across the county, women reported that “never before has so much been asked of them, and never have they delivered so much”. Perhaps the data demonstrating declining female unhappiness is not so paradoxical after all.
Taken together, these studies should serve as a call to action. If ever there was a time for women to rally around each other’s efforts to succeed, that time is now.
Women will only achieve parity when there are fundamental changes in the structure of the workplace and our homes. The Shriver Report makes clear that all of society’s institutions must be recast to address our changing roles at work and at home. It is simply unsustainable to work as hard for less compensation at work and experience unchanged responsibilities at home. Fortunately, the young men entering the workforce today fully expect equal responsibilities at work along with shared roles at home. That dynamic can surely help drive change. But even as we welcome the more egalitarian perspective of younger workers, we cannot wait another decade or longer for their numbers to make the difference. We must drive the change we need by working together, and engaging our male colleagues in this effort. Gender disparity at every level must become unacceptable to us, our clients, our colleagues and our families. This is about our will, our determination, and our commitment of resources.
Let 2009 mark the end of studies demonstrating unequal compensation, flat-lined equity partnership opportunities, and limited leadership roles. Let’s strive to make 2010 the year that we all recognise that success is not a zero-sum game. And may the next study of female happiness show us at greater peace with our evolving roles, supported by social structures that embrace these changes.

Lauren Stiller Rikleen is author of Ending the Gauntlet: Removing Barriers to Women’s Success in the Law, the executive director of the Bowditch Institute for Women’s Success, and a partner at Bowditch & Dewey, LLP. She can be contacted at lrikleen@bowditch.com