Law Commons^™

Confronting Expectations: Women In The Legal Academy, Christine Haight Farley

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

A seemingly insurmountable barrier to women's success in legal academia is the way they are perceived. Numerous studies have shown that women are perceived as less competent than men and that the same work is evaluated more critically when it is thought to have been done by a woman than by a man. This problem exists in all aspects of life, but it is especially acute for women in professional roles, such as academics. Legal academia, however, seems to be particularly resistant to viewing women as equally competent. The article presents original empirical research that shows that student evaluations of …