I've been talking a lot about gender bias this month (National Women's History Month because I need an excuse to do this).  It's opened my eyes so wide that all I really want to do in April is to shut them again!  But I've never let myself off the hook that easily even though some people are, well, irritated with me.  Particularly women.

(as you page through this post, please identify the man who is not gay; you are disqualified from playing this game if you already know the sexual orientation of more than two of these men)

Don't ask.  Don't tell.  Get along.  Go along.  Be productive.  Don't whine.  It's not about gender bias, it's about the lack of available . . . pick one . . . women who want to be CEO's; women who pay more attention to their career than their families (shame on them); and, women who want to work as hard as the men at the top of the AmLaw 100 or Fortune 500 do.  Come on, admit it, ladies, we really would rather just stay at home!  

(break for a research study done by the social scientists:  when asked to count dots on a square for money - "keep counting until you believe you've earned the $4 dollars we'll pay you," women worked 20% longer and 20% faster than their male counterparts before they believed themselves to be entitled to the $4 dollars)

The images we carry in our heads about what the "others" look like, and the opinions we form about who they are based on the image we carry of them, makes more of a difference to our occupational opportunities than any of us wants to believe.  I don't want to believe it.  I just want to work.  That's what I do.  Work.  I'd almost go so far as to say that's who I am.  

Most people who know me don't think of me as a woman attorney.  They think of me as an attorney and then, in some order according to their degree of intimacy with me, their friend, colleague, opponent, mediator, arbitrator, professor, Board Member, speaker, trainer, coach.  A few people, mostly those in my writers group of sixteen years, think of me more as a writer than I do even though I'm finally on the brink of publishing this book and even though I've published a fair amount of short fiction, poetry, and literary non-fiction in the small University Press ("yes, mom, those are the people who still read poetry"). 

I suppose some people think of me as a blogger or someone in their Twitter network but I don't put those things on my vitae nor resonate with them sufficiently to make them Vickie-descriptors.  I'm a step-mother but I don't think my adult step-children think of me that way.  They grew up in a good two-parent home and only after they were grown and dad had been single for a few years did he meet this woman named Vickie who surely didn't look anything like a mother.  Or at least not like their own, beautiful and caring mother, though Steve's former spouse and I are more similar than we are different.

I write this final piece on the status of women (with a hat tip to the brave women at Newsweek who openly addressed the workplace issue that cannot be named until someone gets so discouraged that its name appears in a law suit - professional suicide for women lawyers) because I'm told that raising implicit bias to consciousness pretty much solves the problem of marginalization. 

How easy is that?

O.K., it's not easy.  It's hard.  We're fair minded people raised in the Great American Enfranchisement Era.  We've got political-issue and compassion-fatigue.  Really?  Some people still feel hampered by racism?  We've got an African-American President for gosh sakes.  Isn't that enough for you people?  And look at Hillary Clinton!  She's Secretary of State!  Women can do anything they want to. If  they're not, it's not any of my doing buddy, there just aren't enough qualified women out there.  Women lawyers make sixty cents on a male lawyer's dollar you say?  Well, that just proves they don't want to work as hard as men.  There are no restrictions.  I know a woman who . . . . . .

(by the way, it's nobody's fault - but we do need to help one another move past racial, religious, national, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and poverty stereotypes)

Here's the hilarious, fearless and brutally honest Chris Rock on minorities and money:

I live in Alpine, New Jersey, in a $3 million home. There are 4 other black people that live in my neighborhood. So it's me, a fairly successful comedian, then Mary J. Blige, one of the greatest R&B singers of all time, Jay-Z, one of the greatest rap artists, and Denzel Washington, one of the great actors today, right? Everyone else is white.

You know what my neighbor does?

He's a dentist!

He's not the greatest dentist of all time. He's not a superstar dentist. He's just a dentist!

You know what it would take for a black dentist to live in that neighborhood? If a black dentist wanted to live in that neighborhood, he would have had to invent teeth!

(not quite verbatim quote from Zen Personal Finance). I hear this story when people give me their successful women-ADR-neutral lists (they're pretty short lists) or tell me how few deserving women ADR professionals there are.  Deborah Rothman is the name most frequently mentioned on the "deserving women" short list.  She's a friend of mine and the Mary J. Blige of ADR. 

Deborah Rothman.  (from whom, by the way, I did not seek permission to mention)

(No, Deborah is not part of the "Which one of these Men is Not Gay Test).

Deborah was in Yale's first graduating class of women along with Meryl Streep - the first class of women in the history of the Ivy League to graduate from Yale University.  With Magna Cum Laude honors no less. Then Deborah went on to earn her Masters Degree in Public Affairs from. . . .  ready?  Princeton University.  And her law degree from NYU.  

(Meryl, as the archetypal evil woman executive in The Devil Wears Prada)

Before becoming a high-stakes commercial ADR neutral in 1991 (that's nearly twenty years of experience folks) Deborah Rothman worked with one of the top ten law firms in town - Manatt, Phelps.  Then, when she had children, she formed her own successful business, Baby Fair Enterprises, for which she served as CEO for four years.  Then she became an ADR neutral at a time when people thought "mediation" was "meditation" and the ranks of ADR professionals were almost entirely drawn from the ranks of retired Judges.  Deborah - breaking every glass ceiling she's ever failed to see.

Here's Deborah's resume.  How many neutrals of any gender have qualifications like this? 

Deborah invented teeth!   

When you think "woman arbitrator" or "woman mediator" I want you to think of Deborah.  I do not want you to call to mind the image of woman mediators an attorney recently told me popped into his head when he thought "woman mediator."  These women are fairly representative of the picture he painted except that they're not also crying.

(sorry, sisters, you look great but you don't appeal to my market!)

Here is what just a few of my Southern California commercial mediator women friends look like:  

 Occupations of the pictured men:  Air Force weapons systems officer; NASA astronaut; NFL star; rocket scientist (for major US defense contractor); television personality and style-maker; Governor of an American state; television series star; U.S. Congressman. 

Which one is not gay?