The point of paying attention to what's going on at Yale Law School is Yale's persistent recognition at the top of the academic law school heap. So what's going on with women law students at Yale? This just-released study (PDF), "Yale Law Women SpeakU," highlights gender differences in class participation and assertiveness in seeking references and recommendations. The relative reticence of the women law students has not decreased, and in some respects has increased, compared to the same study conducted a decade ago. Reticence appears to disadvantage women law students in participation on law review and in climbing the partner track. To the extent that Big Law culture values an assertive style, the Yale data may explain the relatively slow gains in leadership roles that women have been able to achieve in the Big Law firm world. If assertiveness and aggressive style are necessary to provide excellence in legal services and to market one's abilities then by all means, women should be taught in law school how to acquire the necessary skills and style. But, on the other hand, what if the assertion that greater assertiveness by women lawyers is important to success is just like the insistence two decades ago that women must dress like men in the courtroom to be successful -- an empty assumption whose basic purpose is to perpetuate the status quo (a status quo that looks increasingly vulnerable in its own right)?
Diversifying the profession can't just be about gender and racial equity. Surely we can be a profession that embraces a variety of styles in service delivery. Which brings us to the best-selling new book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts, by Susan Cain. Judith Warner's review of the book describes its premise:
Many of the self-avowed introverts she meets in the course of this book, which combines on-the-scenes reporting with a wide range of social science research and a fair bit of “quiet power” cheerleading, ape extroversion. Though some fake it well enough to make it, going along to get along in a country that rewards the outgoing, something precious, the author says, is lost in this masquerade. Unchecked extroversion — a personality trait Cain ties to ebullience, excitability, dominance, risk-taking, thick skin, boldness and a tendency toward quick thinking and thoughtless action — has actually, she argues, come to pose a real menace of late. The outsize reward-seeking tendencies of the hopelessly outer-directed helped bring us the bank meltdown of 2008 as well as disasters like Enron, she claims. With our economy now in ruins, Cain writes, it’s time to establish “a greater balance of power” between those who rush to speak and do and those who sit back and think. Introverts — who, according to Cain, can count among their many virtues the fact that “they’re relatively immune to the lures of wealth and fame” — must learn to “embrace the power of quiet.” And extroverts should learn to sit down and shut up.
Introverts may be an odd audience for a book about power and leadership — concepts that necessarily involve the tiring and unappealing prospect of having power over, and leadership of, other people. Jonathan Rauch, a contributing editor at National Journal, tapped into the inherent humor of this contradiction some years ago, when he wrote a much-read meditation in The Atlantic on introversion. Rauch dreamed about the dawning of an “Introverts’ Rights movement,” the slogan of which might someday be “Please shush.” He got the tone just right: “Remember, someone you know, respect and interact with every day is an introvert, and you are probably driving this person nuts.”
Maybe those quiet women (and men) law students at Yale (and elsewhere) are on to something. Let's start listening.
