Biglaw

Research Proves Women Should Not Work For Republicans

This is why every female associate needs to know her boss's politics.

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shutterstock_249870718This sounds like something cooked up in some liberal conspiracy circle, but it is literally everything you always thought about Republicans but couldn’t prove. Now science has your back. It turns out the political leanings of your boss have an impact on how you are compensated and the likelihood of getting promoted — if you are a woman.

In the study, two business professors, Seth Carnahan and Brad Greenwood, sought to establish that people whose personal political opinions were conservative actually treat their female employees worse than their male counterparts. The study focused on law firms, which is what makes this study so damning, and they tracked individual political donations from partners at the 200 largest law firms between 2007 and 2012 and compared those donations to the outcomes for female associates. The results are not good.

The researchers’ ability to control across firms is what makes the data so powerful. It isn’t the case where there is one “bad” place to work for women, instead, it is directly correlated to the personal beliefs of the partners they work for. Reason.com details the study’s methodology:

As one way to test this, Carnahan and Greenwood explored merger-and-acquisition deals which U.S. law firms were involved in from 2007 through 2012—a sample that included 5,702 deals involving 16,860 partners and 18,215 associates at US law firms. Even after controlling for things such as an associate’s number of years with a firm, their law-school ranking, shared law-school ties between associates and partners, and law-firm location, they found a “negative interaction between donations to Republicans and the selection of female associates” to serve with partners on client teams.

Oof. So women don’t get to be on the big deals or big cases — you’d  better believe that has lasting impacts on their careers:

The authors also pinpointed associates at America’s top 200 law firms in 2006, and followed them until they received a promotion to partner or exited the company. Women made up about 45 percent of all associates. With or without controls factored in, Republican leadership in a practice area corresponded negatively to female promotion rates in that area and positively with turnover rates.

So it is clear to me, the researchers were able to establish the correlation between preference for political parties and the career opportunities for women. So, if you are a woman and thinking about lateraling to a new firm or a law student thinking about where you’d like to interview, you’d best become very comfortable with the FEC’s search capabilities.

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The authors point out there is no evidence there was conscious discrimination at play, but the inadvertent type of sexism is no less terrible and just as likely to derail your career. They also point out there might be other reasons a liberal partner may reward women associates more than their conservative counterparts, such as having more female clients, unduly promoting women, or rewarding liberal women who share their beliefs (not that conservative women did any better with conservative bosses). That sounds like a bunch of double talk to me, but the reason is almost beside the point. The data bears out a clear piece of advice for women lawyers: If you want to have a successful legal career, you have to know the political leanings of your boss, preferably before you show up on your first day.

“In general, women are much less likely to be promoted, and much more likely to leave their firms,” said Carnahan, an assistant professor of strategy at Michigan’s Ross School of Business. “We found that this gender gap gets smaller when male bosses are more liberal, but it gets larger when male bosses are more conservative.”

This study is basically actual research that tells women who find themselves in conservative law firms, “You are not crazy! That feeling you have every time a staffing decision is made isn’t in your head.” It is about time we have proof.

Bosses Who Donate to Republicans Are Less Likely to Promote Female Staff [Reason.com]

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