CBA Record May-June 2024

Women Lawyers in the Exponential Age By Nina Fain, CBA Record Editorial Board Member

make significantly less than 84% of what men, particularly white men, earn. Majmudar queried, “Why does this matter?” It matters because as among other pertinent factors, income inequality, fueled in part by the gender wage gap, is a significant contributor to wealth inequal ity. That stark wealth gap has in fact grown in the U.S. It affects everything women lawyers face, from student debt repay ment, homeownership, children’s school tuition payments from grade school through university educations, and capital investment for retirement. Most critically, wealth inequality perpetuates itself over generations, compounding women law yers’ ability to better educate themselves and assist and support their children or to achieve their own personal goals. In a fresh legislative initiative, legisla tors sponsored the Salary Transparency Act that becomes effective in 2025. The amendments will mandate salary trans parency for most employers in their hiring practices. Specifically, employers of 15 or more employees must include the wage range and a general description of benefits and other compensation for the job, promotion, or transfer postings. Also, employers of 15 or more employ ees must share with employees the wage range and a general description of the benefits and other compensation for their position annually and upon hire, promo tion, transfer, or request. At the Secrets to Self-Advocacy event, Jane Flanagan, Direc tor of the Illinois Department of Labor, shared that “the law is enforced through a complaint filed by an affected employee with the Department of Labor.” Financial Success and Well-Being At the CBA Women’s History Month program, Owning Your Worth: 2024 Exploring Financial Success and Well Being , co-sponsored by the CBA Finance Committee and the Treasurer’s Education Series, the focus was on building wealth and owning your worth. The program

Pictured from left at Secrets to Self-Advocacy: Jane Flanagan, Illinois Department of Labor, Gail Schnitzer Eisenberg, Loftus Eisenberg, and Sharmili Majmudar, Women Employed.

A lta May Hulett. As Women’s His tory Month has drawn to a close, let us say her name. Why? She was the person who successfully lobbied the Illinois state legislature to pass legisla tion to allow women access to the same jobs as men. That legislation, the first of its kind in the United States, catapulted Hulett to prominence as she became the first woman licensed to practice law in Illinois in 1873. But unfortunately for Hulett, the CBA, founded in 1874, like many other institutions missed the memo, and Hulett and all other women lawyers were excluded from membership. What has changed? In 2024, two cen turies after Hulett’s Industrial Age achieve ment, women lawyers find themselves in a new Exponential Age, still struggling with wage inequality, lack of pay trans parency, and employment discrimination. So how best may women lawyers navi gate the workplace bottlenecks that pit women against each other as they jockey for success while juggling family manage ment, career advancement, and personal well-being? There is still no map to guide women in their fight to leverage profes sional gains, with some even falling victim

to manipulation by their male coun terparts who seek to detour them away from their career potential. Added to this burden are emerging societal changes that impose the bias of disparate cultural forces on women as they climb to the summit of steeper mountains, in what women like Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Gloria Steinem, and Barbara Jordan thought by now would be the Golden Age of the working woman. Secrets to Self-Advocacy According to Sharmili Majmudar, Execu tive Vice President of Policy, Programs and Research at Women Employed, pay equity research shows that based on analysis of median weekly earnings for full-time workers in 2022, women earned just 84% of what men earned. Trusted sources like the Wall Street Journal have reported this same data, which does not yet reflect the full impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. At the CBA Women’s History Month program, Secrets to Self-Advocacy , Majmu dar informed attendees that many racial and ethnic subgroups of working women

14 May/June 2024