Smiling Should Never Be A Condition For Partnership

Is this an acceptable request?

In the very best of circumstances, making partner at a firm is difficult. At a minimum, it requires lots of hard work, dedication, and just a bit of luck. Now imagine as a condition of your elevation to the partnership you were required to “smile more.”

Ugh.

Over at Slate’s Dear Prudence advice column, there’s a woman attorney hoping to make partner at a midsized law firm. The only catch? She has to smile more.

I’m a female lawyer on the brink of making partner at a midsize firm. I’ve been passed up several times in favor of male colleagues who bill fewer hours and generate significantly less business. When I asked what I needed to do to get there, I was told I needed to smile more, come out of my office and attend more company events and happy hours.

I attend all holiday parties and major firm events, but I am already working 70-plus hours a week, which leaves me little time for my family. The happy hours are every week and last for hours, and I don’t drink! I am friendly and make conversation with the partners and get lots of praise from clients. I am already burned out and it is affecting my family life and health. I’m just not sure I can give any more and the men that were promoted above me rarely attend any of these events, leave the office at 4:00, and I’m willing to bet were never told to smile more!

I feel like this is a subtle form of discrimination. There is only one female partner out of 20, and these are the people voting. I’ve invested a lot in the company, so it’s not that simple to just leave.

—70-Hour Work Week

Now the notion that one may get burnt out before making partner is an all too common one. The push for the professional brass ring of partnership is a difficult one, and plenty of people don’t make it to the finish line.

But this seems beyond any acceptable request. Seriously… smile more? There really isn’t much room to interpret this as anything but sexist. Women are valuable only when they are accommodating, and expected to do the emotional work to make the work environment cordial.

There is also the creepy factor — women are all too familiar with the catcall imploring them to smile. It’s infuriating but relatively easy to ignore when a guy on the street thinks he’s entitled to control the way a woman’s face is arranged, but when smiling is a condition of your professional advancement, it’s a truly detrimental form of bias.

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headshotKathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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