The Wave of Women - It’s Not Just Coming

I first published this blog on an old website quite some time ago. With the recent passing of RBG, it seemed appropriate and desirable to bring it back from the depths. RIP, RBG. You can never be replaced.

I keep hearing a lot of talk and seeing lots of stats lately about how women are rolling on into higher level positions everywhere. Accepting the mantle of responsible leadership for more and more these days. It’s been a long time coming.

It wasn’t so many years ago that women were breaking the glass ceiling just by getting “real” jobs, instead of mere supporting roles in the professional world. Women were fighting for one single seat at the table.

Look at two very visible and inspiring women role models – Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg. They graduated with impressive law degrees and academic credentials that put many men to shame, yet neither of them could get hired as a lawyer upon graduation. They were offered secretarial jobs. Or no job at all. And that wasn’t so long ago. 

What’s happening now is amazing to experience and witness. We aren’t asking for seats at someone else’s table, we are setting up our own tables again and again. We don’t have the need or desire to ask for a seat at someone else’s.

We are coming together in networking organizations that are supportive of each other, no matter where we are, rather than competing or taking each other down.

For every Hobby Lobby out there, how many women owned business are making sure their female employees have access to health coverage that is not based on someone else’s religious beliefs? I don’t know that number, but I bet it is a lot.

When I first started out my own legal career in Boston, there were plenty of women around in the profession. It didn’t feel like we had done anything all that special by getting to work as lawyers right off the bat. By 1999 it had become pretty accepted that we would get jobs as lawyers.

But, sadly, we weren’t all that supportive of each other.

I landed in a practice area that did not have a lot of women practitioners. Litigation wasn’t (and still isn’t) the most family-friendly lifestyle and that may have kept women away. Women partners at the big firms were just starting to become a bit more commonplace, although it felt like each announcement warranted celebration.

We all seemed to be getting on just fine. We didn’t need to band together and banding together in the past didn’t get us anywhere anyway. Not long before I graduated, there were only so many spots available at many law firms for female candidates, so we had to compete, not bond.

I was a member of a bar association that had very few female members. We tried to start a women’s group many years ago. It never really took root, perhaps in part because one male member insisted on being included and would show up and… be kind of annoying. So, our women’s group fell apart after a short time. I had hopes that it would kindle something - anything - to start our equivalent of the “old boys club.”

But we girls never really came together and supported each other just because we were women. There were a few women in the group that I became friends with (and still call friends to this day). But that was because we just liked each other. We all seemed to have plenty of male friends, too.

Back then, we women lawyers still debated things like:

-          Should we wear skirts to court or are pants ok now?

-          What if you drive a stick and the heel on your shoe is wearing down from the clutch? Is that ok?

-          Do old man judges still think we’re stupid?

-          Have you had a client/another lawyer/judge/mediator hit on you? Alone in a conference room? Or worse?

The conversations and the defeated efforts to rally the women generally just seemed to reinforce the message I had received already that there wasn’t much benefit to collaborating with women for women’s sake.

I didn’t give up, though. At one point I tried joining a women’s specific bar association. I am far from a political extremist, but I found the group to have a very politically driven agenda. There seemed to be a “you’re with us or against us” mentality and it didn’t feel very welcoming because I didn’t agree with all of their agenda. I wanted to develop more professional relationships with women and I felt like I couldn’t there because I wasn’t always politically “with them.” I didn’t feel welcome.

Today, I recognize that experience may have been more about what was going on in my own head than anyone else’s. But the message felt reinforced for me again.  

So I stopped showing up and just stayed my course developing relationships with people who had similar interests and challenges. And that was mostly men.

Flash forward many years (it’s been over 20 years now since I graduated from law school and successfully passed the bar) and I am only now connecting with women professionally who want to support other women just because we are part of the “girls’ club.” Professionals, business owners, corporate CEOs and execs, stay at home mom-preneurs, I see them all in many of the groups I belong to these days.

And what is inspiring is that by coming together with the right attitude and mindset, I see us supporting each other where we are. It doesn’t mean that every person who meets at these events is guaranteed to find a willing purchase of her services or products. It isn’t a quid pro quo style of networking.

It’s bigger and way better than that.

We come together and let each other know that we all have our struggles. We all feel like big freaking failures some days.

And we all celebrate our success. We celebrate that we have the ability to choose and to shape our own destinies. We celebrate in seeing our communities change for the better due to our ability and willingness to step into positions of inspired leadership.

We no longer ask for a seat at the table, we create our own tables with plenty of seats. And when there’s not an empty one available, we welcome someone showing up with a folding chair.

Does my new found belief that women supporting other women is great for all of us mean I don’t connect with or serve male clients anymore? Definitely not.

But I do know that my relationship building with women professionals has opened my eyes to a different world of possibilities that I never would have seen if I had stayed stuck where I was.

The wave isn’t coming. It’s here.