Deborah Daniels: Women are rising—but not fast enough

The Indiana Lawyer recently reported a new milestone: According to the National Association for Law Placement, women now constitute a majority of associates in U.S. law firms. Perhaps this was inevitable. For years, women have made up over half the U.S. population and well over 50% of U.S. law students.

My initial reaction was to be pleased that women have come such a long way. When I entered law school in 1973, there were very few women law students. We knew our numbers were growing when school authorities were forced to expand the two-stall women’s restroom to avoid having all the women arrive late to class.

I also read an article in recent weeks about the seismic changes on the verge of occurring in the WNBA, whose popularity and revenue are soaring. Primarily based on a new media rights deal that will vastly increase the cash available to the league, player salaries and the salary cap are about to increase dramatically. Most players will almost immediately become free agents, able to command far greater than the measly salaries they now receive, many as low as $75,000. (I was relieved to see that Caitlin Clark has a rookie deal that keeps her with the Indiana Fever until at least 2026.) Players like Brittney Griner may no longer have to play in Russia in the off-season to make real money, and thus risk becoming a pawn of the Russian government.

Great news, right? One hundred and four years after getting the vote, women are finally coming into their own.

Well, not so fast. Based on this good news, I decided to do some research. And what I found was that women are still not doing all that well, collectively, in the workplace.

While women are reported to make up almost 40% of practicing lawyers—and as indicated, more than half of the law firm associates—they represent only 26.65% of law firm partners and only 22.6% of equity partners, according to a January article in JURISTnews. NALP’s numbers are similar.

Women make up 41% of state supreme court justices. However, only five of the chief justices (10%) are women—though we can be proud that our Chief Justice Loretta Rush is one of them.

In state legislatures, it is rare that women reach the 50% mark. In fact, only two states have legislatures composed of at least 50% women. Indiana ranks 38th among the 50 states, with women constituting only 27.3% of our General Assembly.

The corporate world doesn’t fare much better. Women make up only 5.4% of corporate CEOs, globally. There are 53 women CEOs, or 10%, in the Fortune 500—though again, we can be proud that our own Gail Boudreaux, president and CEO of Elevance Health, and Cummins Chair and CEO Jennifer Rumsey are among them. Women hold only 11.8% of C-suite positions in publicly traded firms.

And speaking of sports: Despite data demonstrating that the U.S. women’s soccer team brought more revenue into the league than the men’s team over the past few years, women playing in the 2023 World’s Cup continued to make about one-fourth of what the men made.

I have never considered myself a feminist; I don’t tend to beat that drum. I have doubts about the integrity of the data on the alleged gender pay gap in the business world. But we are just not where we should be at this point in our nation’s history. Perhaps in a future column we can examine why not.•

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Daniels is a retired partner of Krieg DeVault LLP, a former U.S. Attorney and assistant U.S. attorney general and former president of the Sagamore Institute. Send comments to ibjedit@ibj.com.

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