Gender Still Matters: Effects of Workplace Discrimination on Employment Schedules of Young Professionals

The influx of women into the legal profession has significantly changed the landscape of legal practice. Women lawyers today no longer face the challenges to entering the legal profession they encountered thirty years ago. However, despite these advancements, research continues to demonstrate that there are still gender-based issues women have to face in the legal workplace. Among these issues to date are the difficulties in combining responsibilities of work with responsibilities of families and children that underpin women’s employment and earning disadvantages. Using survey data from a national representative U.S. panel study of lawyers, we examine how work schedules, comparing full-time to part-time work, vary by personal disposition and workplace characteristics. Drawing from prominent explanations of gender inequality in the legal profession, we focus on inquiries of commitment to work, performance, ideal worker expectations, practice settings, and job satisfaction among dimensions of workplace characteristics and examine their effects on women and men lawyers’ work schedules. Logistic regression results show that work schedules significantly vary by gender, parental role, and experience of workplace discrimination. We find that, although all parents experience types of discrimination, there are still major differences in work schedules between mothers and fathers. Our study adds to the gender debate of employment and organizations by examining quantitatively experiences of workplace discrimination.