Blog #24: Gender Expectations & Stereotypes

Donielle is a woman that graduated from the Phoenix School of Law in May and has been working as a city prosecutor since she based the Bar exam over the summer.  She and I worked together under the supervision of the prosector for Avondale city.  I sent her a quick email to describe any gender issues that she has had over her time in law school as well as her first few months as an attorney.  She did say that in law school there are more men than women, but overall, people were not worried about your gender, just about the work that you were completed while at school.  This is a very different response than I thought that I was going to get based on the discussions that we have had in class.  

When we interned together, we were the only females that worked in our entire office, and the only other female was a paralegal office manager.  Donielle talked about this experience and how we were still treated with a great amount of respect although we were the minority gender.  She said that the only experiences that she has had with gender is working along side of so many men in her profession currently.  She is the only female attorney in her office, besides a defense attorney that she shares office space with.  However, the men in her office respect her for the job that she does and being a woman doesn't take away from that.  Overall, she has had a wonderful experience, and unlike many other women in this non-traditional career, she is not falling victim to the fact that she is a woman.  I think that this has to do with the fact that she is a brand new attorney just out of a very small law school and she hasn't been exposed to some of the people in this industry that are not used to women being in positions, such as attorneys.