In his response to the justified hoopla over his attack on Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Jeff Rosen writes:

I was satisfied that my sources's concerns were widely shared when I read Sotomayor's entry in the Almanac of the Federal Judiciary, which includes the rating of judges based on the collective opinions of the lawyers who work with them. Usually lawyers provide fairly positive comments. That's what makes the discussion of Sotomayor's temperament so striking. Rosen quotes a bunch of negative comments from attorneys-"overly aggressive," "abuses lawyers"—followed by a brief acknowledgment of a couple of tepidly positive ones—"good legal ability." She sounds like a bitch. Who'd want her on the Supreme Court?

Or many other women judges for that matter. Because this is how lawyers often talk about women on the bench. It's an old story. In 1994, in writing up the findings of the Ninth Circuit Gender Bias Task Force, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor noted that "attorney evaluations of judicial performance revealed a ‘pattern of bias;' ‘female judges were rated lower consistently than their male counterparts on every attribute measured.'" O'Connor was quoting a 1993 study by law professor Joyce S. Sterling. Here's another summary from a symposium by the National Association of Women Judges:

Many states conduct judicial performance evaluations, sometimes called bar polls, in which lawyers respond to a survey instrument querying their opinions about the judges in their communities. ... Often these evaluations have proven to be an open invitation to biased assessments in which competent, even-tempered female and minority judges are rated as subpar and lacking in judicial temperament. When Colorado law professor Joyce Sterling analyzed the Colorado Judicial Performance Evaluation utilized for the 1992 retention election to which nearly 11,000 attorneys responded, she found "a clear pattern of bias" with women judges ranked significantly lower than male judges. Not only did male attorneys rank female judges lower than men on every attribute measured, there were five attributes on which women lawyers ranked female judges significantly lower: compassion, courtesy, satisfactory performance as a motions judge, satisfactory performances as a settlement judge, and overall rating. This list is revealing because it shows that the expectations for women judges by both men and women are that they will be warm and nurturing. A male judge who strictly controls his courtroom runs a tight ship. His female counterpart is a bitch.

The bold is mine. Because I feel like shouting. Is this really where the conversation has to go when we talk about appointing a woman to the Supreme Court?

Tags: Sonia Sotomayor; Supreme Court; judges

Ann, I think you're right that the Times article on gender bias in the theater may have leaned a bit hard on the women-keeping-their-sisters-down aspect of the original study. (I also think you're right that the best thing we can do, as audience members, is actually get out there and support quality work by buying tickets.)

But I also think there are elements of this study that should give us pause. When Sands sent those scripts out to producers, directors, and literary managers, she found that plays by women, about women, had an especially difficult time impressing these gatekeepers: The characters were deemed less likable, and the plays less producable, than when the same scripts were presented with male bylines. (Female playwrights were deemed more capable of doing rewrites on these female-oriented scripts, however—but is that a good thing? Should we ladies celebrate being seen as more tractable?) *

I asked my friend Sarah Treem, a playwright and screenwriter, to offer her thoughts on the article. Here's what she said:

People have been talking about this issue for years, but I think there was an unspoken fear that if you brought it up publicly, as a female playwright, artistic directors would be less likely to do your script. And nobody wanted to "marginalize" herself by identifying as a female writer. But the difference between the way male and female playwrights are treated has been in the forefront of my consciousness since I graduated from drama school. Even while I was in in school, I had a few very well-intended people—professors—who told me I "just had to be patient" because it "takes women longer".

When my first production (A Feminine Ending) came out in New York, a popular female blogger wrote on her site: "I'm all for playwrights writing what they know, but being familiar with some of Sarah Treem's other work, I have to wonder if she's capable of writing stories that don't mirror her own." This is because the plays of mine that she read all involved young female protagonists. So, of course, I must have been writing about my own experience. And of, course, because the protagonist was young and female, and hadn't been, say raped, or lost her memory or something extreme, her story wasn't legitimate.

A few years later, after I had had work produced in major theaters all around the country, I asked a very influential female theater producer how one maintains a career in the theater. She told me that I should stop writing plays about women.

(In other news: How come there are so few female musical directors?)

* Correction, June 28, 2009: The original version of this paragraph said that respondents rated scripts with a female writer's name to be "of lower quality" and "of lower artistic merit" than the same script with a male name. Scripts with female pen-names did score lower on all three survey questions related to the overall "quality" of the script. However, only one of those questions asked for an opinion about the script's inherent "artistic merit," and the difference seen here was not statistically significant.

Tags: Broadway, economics, new york times, playwrights, Princeton, theater, women writers

On the heels of Caitlin Mostacella's insightful post on double standards and warped cultural values when it comes to female athletes, here's some beauty news on Caster Semenya to curl your teeth (via Broadsheet):

The 18-year-old appears on the cover of You magazine with her cheeks rouged, lips glossed and nails painted. Instead of her yellow-and-green tracksuit, she dons a sleek black dress that covers up her washboard abs; gold jewelry, not sweat, drips from her neck; and her cornrows are combed out into a bouncy coiffure. The South African glossy declares in a headline: "Wow, Look at Caster Now!" Also: "Athletics star Caster Semenya as you’ve never seen her before—transformed by YOU from powergirl to glamour girl." Inside the magazine, a four-page spread shows Semenya in various feminine fashions: a sequined top and skin-tight black leggings and, according to the BBC, "a grey knee-length dress worn with a grey cropped jacket and a black-and-white cocktail dress worn with stilettos." The magazine quotes her as saying, "I'd like to dress up more often and wear dresses but I never get the chance." After the shoot, Semenya reportedly told her manager to buy all of the outfits she had modeled.

Gross. Not the young Semenya, who looks very nice. The makeover. This, we'll recall, is a bit like what happened with Susan Boyle after her starmaking turn on Britain's Got Talent. But here it seems even more fraudulent. Of course, it's hard to blame Semenya for wanting some pretty clothes—as a busy, traveling, regimented professional athlete, I'm sure that accessory shopping is hard to come by. But it's incredibly lame that, because of the earlier controversy, Semenya's natural inclination to look pretty is cast as a referendum on gender itself. See, we say, she's a woman—because she likes clothing and jewelry. Cause, meet effect.

This incident speaks to an annoying, subversive narrative of cultural fright that Kai Wright tried to unpack recently over at The Root:

It’s important to note that no one believes she has masqueraded as a woman. Rather, the hypothesis is that she’s been confused her whole life. “Clearly it was not her fault,” IAAF spokesperson Nick Davies told the BBC, in speculating about what it’ll mean if she fails her gender exam. “It’s a medical issue. … She was born, christened and grew up a woman.” She just might not be one, at least not by IAAF’s standards.

So now she must endure a stunning battery of tests, stretching far past a mere dropping of the trousers. Davies explains: “There is chromosome testing, gynecological investigation, all manner of things, organs, X-rays, scans. … It’s very, very comprehensive.” Gynecological investigation? I mean, really?

Yes, excuse me—I'm off to watch Serena Williams outrun, outserve, and outlast another star-crossed U.S. Open opponent.

Photograph of Caster Semenya by Lee Warren/Gallo ImagesGetty Images.

Tags: Caster Semenya, female athletes, gender discrimination, makeovers, You Magazine

On the heels of Caitlin Mostacella's insightful post on double standards and warped cultural values when it comes to female athletes, here's some beauty news on Caster Semenya to curl your teeth (via Broadsheet):

The 18-year-old appears on the cover of You magazine with her cheeks rouged, lips glossed and nails painted. Instead of her yellow-and-green tracksuit, she dons a sleek black dress that covers up her washboard abs; gold jewelry, not sweat, drips from her neck; and her cornrows are combed out into a bouncy coiffure. The South African glossy declares in a headline: "Wow, Look at Caster Now!" Also: "Athletics star Caster Semenya as you’ve never seen her before—transformed by YOU from powergirl to glamour girl." Inside the magazine, a four-page spread shows Semenya in various feminine fashions: a sequined top and skin-tight black leggings and, according to the BBC, "a grey knee-length dress worn with a grey cropped jacket and a black-and-white cocktail dress worn with stilettos." The magazine quotes her as saying, "I'd like to dress up more often and wear dresses but I never get the chance." After the shoot, Semenya reportedly told her manager to buy all of the outfits she had modeled.

Gross. Not the young Semenya, who looks very nice. The makeover. This, we'll recall, is a bit like what happened with Susan Boyle after her starmaking turn on Britain's Got Talent. But here it seems even more fraudulent. Of course, it's hard to blame Semenya for wanting some pretty clothes—as a busy, traveling, regimented professional athlete, I'm sure that accessory shopping is hard to come by. But it's incredibly lame that, because of the earlier controversy, Semenya's natural inclination to look pretty is cast as a referendum on gender itself. See, we say, she's a woman—because she likes clothing and jewelry. Cause, meet effect.

This incident speaks to an annoying, subversive narrative of cultural fright that Kai Wright tried to unpack recently over at The Root:

It’s important to note that no one believes she has masqueraded as a woman. Rather, the hypothesis is that she’s been confused her whole life. “Clearly it was not her fault,” IAAF spokesperson Nick Davies told the BBC, in speculating about what it’ll mean if she fails her gender exam. “It’s a medical issue. … She was born, christened and grew up a woman.” She just might not be one, at least not by IAAF’s standards.

So now she must endure a stunning battery of tests, stretching far past a mere dropping of the trousers. Davies explains: “There is chromosome testing, gynecological investigation, all manner of things, organs, X-rays, scans. … It’s very, very comprehensive.” Gynecological investigation? I mean, really?

Yes, excuse me—I'm off to watch Serena Williams outrun, outserve, and outlast another star-crossed U.S. Open opponent.

Photograph of Caster Semenya by Lee Warren/Gallo ImagesGetty Images.

Tags: Caster Semenya, female athletes, gender discrimination, makeovers, You Magazine

Hanna has a great insight into the Letterman audience's laughter at his confession of having sex with several of his female employees. It's not that Letterman's statement was funny; rather, like Pavlov's dogs, the audience at a comedy show is conditioned to laugh no matter what he says. But it's still interesting to think about why their laughter was so annoying. Could it be because sex between a powerful old man and his nubile young employees is more often tragic than comic? Sometimes it's funny: Reports say that 86-year-old media mogul Sumner Redstone's fortysomething second wife just got a million for each year of their five year marriage. She's probably laughing ... all the way to the bank.

But the hilarity in the Letterman affair was not helped by the other stories in the sexual misbehavior category this week. Alert Swiss bounty hunters nabbed director Roman Polanski as he arrived to accept a lifetime achievement award at the Zurich Film Festival, holding him to answer for the rape of a 13-year-old who came to audition for something when Polanski was a mere 45. Senator Mike Ensign might be in the next cell, if the ethics charges arising from his cover-up of a roll with his campaign aide, followed by bribery of her husband, hold up. Married ex-Senator John Edwards' wedding plans with his much younger former mistress leaked to the New York Times, while his cancer-stricken wife was still alive to read them. Not too many yuks there.

As Emily pointed out recently, there's a big difference between illegal sexual conduct and what's just a pretty terrible idea. I think having sex with one's much younger female dependents is a pretty terrible idea. Without more, Letterman doesn't deserve a jail sentence or probably even a damage judgment. But there's gotta be something between a striped suit and a laugh track. A round of hearty booing would have been nice.

Tags: David Letterman, David Letterman confession, john ensign affair, polanski, sexual harassment, sumner redstone

In a pathetic bid to recruit new members, the Pope suggested that Anglicans who share his homophobia and sexism leave their church and join the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has created an initiative for Anglicans to switch while retaining many distinct Anglican cultural aspects, available mainly to Anglicans who reject their church's willingness to allow gay men and women to become priests. This means, in theory, that large numbers of married Anglican priests could make the switch, the first time that the Catholic Church has ever allowed married priests to join the church in a big group. Which means that the Pope has taken a large step toward increasingly defining Catholicism by bigotry more than by its other elements.

Escalating bigotry and cruelty as a recruitment strategy might sound like a good idea, particularly if you are personally a mean-spirited bigot, but the Pope should look to how that strategy is working for the Republican Party before going further down this path. The Republicans and the Catholic Church are in surprisingly similar situations. Both are watching their membership run out the door, and both are responding by becoming ever more shrill and hateful, which then sends another round of supporters out the door. For the Republicans, the result has been that they're becoming defined as the place to go if you're a nasty, hateful human being. And with this overt appeal to the bigots in the Anglican Church, the Vatican promises to become something similar.

Of course, if you have much experience with Catholicism, you've probably already seen this transformation happening. I've only darkened the doors of a Catholic church in recent years to go to weddings, and even joyful occasions like that are impossible to get through without sentimental posturing about the evils of legal abortion. But for all the shrieking that the official church does on these issues, the congregations don't seem to go along. Despite the endless drumbeat about abortion, the majority of U.S. Catholics remain pro-choice. And the more the Vatican insists on making homophobia and sexism central to its mission, the more they will push the faithful away, and there won't be enough bigoted Anglicans around to replenish their ranks.

Tags: abortion, gay rights, Religion, sexism, vatican

The BBC reported on a dismaying survey on rape demonstrating that three-quarters of female respondents believe a woman is to blame if a man rapes her after she gets in bed with him, and a third of female respondents blame the victim for a man's choice to rape if she wore something "provocative" or had a drink with the guy. All this is interesting, but probably less surprising information than the finding that women were significantly likelier to blame rape victims than men—71 percent of women versus 57 percent of men. Surprising to most people, but not to anyone who deals with the legal system's response to rape. There, it's been common knowledge for a long time that female-heavy juries often let the rapist go because they believe the victim had it coming.

This tendency of so many women to judge rape victims harshly and blame them doesn't seem to make sense. The behaviors that get you judged harshly are so common that many of the women saying you asked for it have themselves performed those behaviors. Dressing to attract male attention, flirting with men, going to bed with men, having a drink with a man? If women who blamed women for rape were consistent, they'd believe they themselves deserve to get raped.

What's going on, as far as I can tell, is the classic rationale of, "But in my case, it's different." People tend to whip this out in touchy situations in general, but when it comes to women and sex, the tendency to judge harshly in others while forgiving yourself and those you love is extreme indeed. When a stranger dresses for men, flirts with men, has a drink with a man, etc., she's a huge slut. When we do it, it's just dating. Abortion clinic workers have darkly joked about this tendency in their anti-abortion patients for a long time—that anti-choicers make exceptions for "rape, incest, and me." Women are often tasked in our society with the job of Slut Police, determining who is a naughty girl who deserves to be punished with rape or forced childbirth, and we're also expected to live our lives and have sex ourselves. So a lot of women cope by eagerly denouncing strangers while making exceptions for themselves.

That men are more likely to be consistent—thinking well of sexually active women while partaking of the benefits of sexual liberation—is something of a puzzle. Part of it may be that many men know damn well that you don't have to rape a woman just because she had a drink with you or even crawled in to bed with you, and so when other men pretend they were helpless in the face of a woman forcing them to rape her, they see that lie for what it is. But even then, only 43 percent of men surveyed were willing to admit there's no excuse for raping a woman.

Tags: Rape, sexual assault, victim-blaming

—Are Republicans becoming the party of the hissy fit? [NYT Opinionator Blog]

—A former Goldman Sachs VP sues for gender discrimination, alleging the company treats working mothers like second-class citizens. [Wall Street Journal]

—Senate Republicans send the health care bill back to the House. [Washington Post]

—Should family court permit wives to sue their husbands’ mistresses? [Times Online]

—Reports indicate that the Vatican failed to defrock an American priest who molested 200 deaf boys. [New York Times]

—Nancy Pelosi, the Anna Wintour of Congress, relies on her husband to pick out her trendy power suits and Tahitian pearls. [The Daily Beast]

Tags: business, Catholic Church, child abuse, divorce, fashion, gender discrimination, health care reform, law, Nancy Pelosi, politics, Republicans

The biggest gender discrimination suit out there made it past a major hurdle on Monday. Wal-Mart's women, who filed suit in 2001 for a host of complaints of sex bias, got a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that allows their case to proceed as a class-action suit. That means that the six named plaintiffs can represent at least hundreds of thousands of their fellow Wal-Mart employees, and maybe 1.6 million of them. The Ninth Circuit ruling also gives the women more leverage in settlement negotiations, as Steven Greenhouse points out in the NYT. The appeals court was closely divided, 6-5, and the underlying legal issue, about what plaintiffs need to show to launch a giant class action, is actually really interesting and contested. Wal-Mart said it would appeal to the Supreme Court. For today, though, the women heading up this suit can take a moment to bask in the glow. Betty Dukes says she was denied the chance to advance at the company after six years of hard work and top performance reviews. This looks like part of a larger pattern: The plaintiffs say that 65 percent of Wal-Mart's hourly employees (less pay, less status) are women, compared with about 33 percent of management. Liza Featherstone wrote a book about the case—more from her here, and background from walmartwatch.com.

Tags: gender discrimination, Wal-Mart

For decades, women—and quite a few men—have organized to eradicate the gender gap in pay. In the 1970s, they wore buttons saying “59%” to symbolize the reality that women only earned 59 cents for every dollar a man earned. In Leviticus, a man is valued at 50 shekels of silver and a woman only 30, indicating that not much changed in the 2,000 years preceding the early 1960s.

Despite these efforts, the Senate is lagging behind the House in beefing up the laws that ensure that women get fair pay. After the Supreme Court ruled against Lily Ledbetter, both houses of Congress passed the Fair Pay Act—the first legislation that President Obama signed into law—which bars wage discrimination based on sex, race, or national origin among employees for work in "equivalent jobs." In January 2009, the House followed up with the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would beef up enforcement of the existing protections. But the Senate is stalled.

Meanwhile, the gender pay gap has taken on heightened importance during the Great Recession. Since the recession began in December 2007, every seven out of every 10 jobs lost has been lost by a man. Hence the nickname “man-cession.”

What does this mean for families? It means that around the nation, in millions of homes, a woman is the one supporting her husband while he searches for work. Or maybe she’s a single mother whose child-support checks have stopped coming because her ex has lost his job.

For families like these, the gender pay gap can make the difference between being able to pay the mortgage and not. The typical married-couple family in which the husband has lost his job lives on just over 40 percent of their prior earnings (since because of the pay gap, on average he brought home a slightly bigger paycheck than she did). They are also probably struggling with access to health insurance because married-couple families are more likely to get than from his job, rather than hers.

Day after day, we read about how Americans are anxious about the economy and about losing their job or seeing their hours cut. Fundamentally, they are concerned about their family’s well-being. This is exactly where pay equity matters: It’s about fairness, and also about relieving economic anxiety. If every woman earned a fair day’s pay, her family’s economic circumstances would be that much better and its stress level that much lower. Let’s go, Senate: It’s time to get moving.

Tags: fair pay act, gender discrimination, lily ledbetter, paycheck fairness act