by Laura Lee Partington
Here is a truncated list of common comments/queries about my 6-week-old daughter when we venture out in public.
1) “Look at that hair!”
2) “She’s so cute/pretty/darling/adorable!”
3) “What did you name her?”
It’s that third one that normally throws people, and therefore me, for a loop. A woman whom I don’t know recently went through the entire list, and when we got to number 3, I took a deep breath and said, “Wren?Wren Geneva.”
The woman looked at me quizzically and then did what adults love to do to tiny children: proclaim what they will be when they grow up. “Oh, that sounds like a name for a country singer? or a pageant queen.” Somehow, I pulled my thoughts away from Wren becoming a toddler in a tiara quickly enough to respond with this: “I was thinking more along the lines of a Supreme Court Justice.”
The woman smiled vaguely, turned, and left us to our own crazy devices.
Sonia Sotomayor went on Sesame St. to talk about careers and explained that being a princess didn’t quite qualify. Brilliant!
Anyone who encountered to me more than once in the law school last year probably remembers that I was slightly obsessed with the fact that there is a decline in the number of female applicants and therefore a slip in the number of women in law schools across the country. Just over 10 years ago, women made up slightly more than half of students pursuing a JD. This percentage has declined steadily since 2002, and nary a proper study nor explication for the trend has emerged.
I, for one, would like to see the trend change. I would also like to see more women in leadership positions and C-level jobs, more women in legislative roles, more women as partners of law firms (rather than the abysmal 13%), and more women entrepreneurs. Why wouldn’t I? It opens up my daughter’s options.
I’m not saying that a stranger at a ball field could change the course of my daughter’s life by merely suggesting potential professions, but I would prefer that maybe one or two people suggest to my daughter that she can be whatever she wants to be. I would love to see an increasing umber of brilliant female colleagues challenging the status quo.
