True Progress: Female Lawyers As Multi-Dimensional Characters In The Media

Female business professionals, including lawyers, are not immune from the media’s refusal to divorce women from their traditional role within a family structure.

women leadershipEd. note: This column is part of Law School Transparency’s podcast mini-series about women in the law. This week’s theme is women lawyers in the media. Learn more here.

One of the most noticeable differences in the media’s portrayal of men and women is that even women who are very accomplished in their chosen field remain largely defined by their familial relationships.

Last summer, the Chicago Tribune made waves when its Twitter headline about Corey Cogdell’s Olympic success read only “Wife of Bears’ lineman wins a bronze medal.” Along these same lines, a Cambridge University Press study of the media’s treatment of female athletes shows them to be more often associated with adjectives like “married,” “un-married,” or “pregnant,” whereas male athletes are more often associated with adjectives directly relevant to their performance, like “fastest,” “strong,” “big,” or “great.”

Female business professionals, including lawyers, are not immune from the media’s refusal to divorce women from their traditional role within a family structure. When Matt Lauer interviewed Mary Barra, the first female CEO of General Motors, on the Today show, he asked her whether she could both handle her job at General Motors and be a good mom. In the world of Biglaw, efforts to improve work-life balance or “alternative work schedules” are viewed as tactics to help recruit and/or retain female attorneys. A simple Google search reveals innumerable articles devoted to helping women balance professional ambition and domestic obligations, with only a choice few employing gender-neutral language or being directed explicitly at men to help them attain the same thing.

A focus on the interplay between the personal and professional lives of women is likewise ubiquitous in fictional depictions of female professionals, including attorneys, on TV and in film. In many modern popular shows depicting female attorneys, the narrative driving the story for many of these characters — be they Ally McBeal, Elle Woods, or Alicia Florrick — is the relationship between their work and their personal lives. In fact, their work as a lawyer is often incidental to the personal drama driving the narrative of the show. The depiction of these female attorneys focuses not on their work as attorneys, but on personal intrigue driven by their roles as wives, mothers, daughters, or girlfriends.

It may be tempting to decry the fact that these characters remain seen primarily through the lens of their identity as a wife or mother. But such multi-dimensional portrayals of women — as not only wives or mothers or girlfriends in relation to a family unit, but also as professional individuals who can maintain these roles and have a career in the legal profession — are far from problematic. Instead, they reflect substantial progress in the media’s depiction of women.

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Throughout much of history, with rare exception, media has been written by men and about men. As a result, the role of women (and other marginalized groups) in these stories was reduced to stereotypical tropes with little to no character development. Their role in the story revolved entirely around their relationship to men. For women, such roles include the ingénue love interest, the haranguing mother-in-law, the maiden aunt who cooks and cleans, or the nosy neighborhood gossip. Even today, shockingly few movies and TV shows pass the relatively low bar of the Bechdel test: a piece passes only if it contains two named women who talk to each other about something other than a man.

Legal dramas, on the other hand, tend to pass the Bechdel test with flying colors. Whether its Olivia Benson and Alex Cabot talking about how best to convict a sexual offender on Law & Order, or Kalinda Sharma divulging the latest evidence she has uncovered to help Diane Lockhart obtain a multi-million-dollar jury verdict in The Good Wife, female characters on these shows frequently interact directly with one another and discuss substantive, tangible issues unrelated to the men in their lives.

Although the arc of an episode may still focus on the issues faced by these women as mother, wives, or daughters, presenting such a well-rounded view of women who are working as attorneys should not be perceived negatively. Characters who are depicted as being able to not only hold their own in a courtroom but also juggle the domestic responsibilities that remain disproportionately tasked to women can serve both to educate current firm decision-makers (who likely came of age in a different, single income, stay-at-home mom era) about the realities of practice as a female attorney and to inspire the next generation of female professionals.

In my practice, I find that I work best with those individuals, whether they be male or female, whom I know as more than just “a very smart accomplished attorney.” The daily grind of legal practice is much more enjoyable when it is populated with people who I also know as devoted parents, loving friends, rabid Golden State Warriors fans, or accomplished jazz musicians.

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In the legal profession, which is plagued by a high incidence of professional unhappiness, mental illness, and alcoholism, an understanding that each of us occupies roles outside of our professional existence is important to develop meaningful relationships and a healthy attitude toward work. In that regard, it is perhaps wiser to encourage reporters to ask questions about the personal relationships developed and maintained by accomplished male attorneys in our midst, and to encourage Hollywood to write male attorney characters that are not only accomplished professionally, but who also have full, well-rounded identities outside of the professional sphere, than to insist that women be assessed in a myopic vacuum of professional accomplishment.

In other words, maybe it’s the male characters that need to be written differently.


Rachel Purcell is a labor and employment and business litigator in the Atlanta office of Miller & Martin PLLC.