Legal Momentum is a National Ally for Vision 2020, a national project that seeks to launch an action agenda to move the United States toward gender equality by 2020, the centennial celebration of the 19th Amendment. On October 21-22, 2010, Vision 2020 sponsored "An American Conversation about Women and Leadership" in Philadelphia, featuring panels about increasing women’s leadership in all fields, from Law to Finance to Arts and Culture.
Lorelie Masters of Jenner & Block LLP served as a Vision 2010 Delegate from Washington, DC. She reflected on the conference in a series of blog posts for Legal Momentum. This is her second post.
The discussion by the panel on business, law, and finance highlighted themes that other panels throughout the conference discussed: the dearth of women in key leadership roles and the failure of our business and law firm to retain women and people of color in the numbers represented in the classes graduating from our colleges and professional schools. The failure to retain women is not simply a question of "increasing the pipeline." We have had sufficient numbers of women graduates for almost two decades, but the numbers of our women leaders in these fields remains at less that 20%.
The panel presented the following recommendations to the Vision 2020 Delegates:
Subha V. Barry, Senior Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer of Freddie Mac's newly created Office of Diversity and Inclusion:
- We need to leverage the power of women-oriented organizations. Women should collaborate to focus on our agenda to advance women’s interests and use our collective voices to support our goals of advancing women in leadership and reducing pay disparities.
- Each of us should figure out what we can do to help. Whom can I mentor? What can I do influence the public debate, and the debate in each of our organizations.
- Promote education. Create connections between women in the work force.
Lynn Laverty Elsenhans, Chief Executive Officer and President of Sunoco, Inc.:
- Establish, support, and participate in programs for young girls to show them how to be a successful leader.
- Use corporate procurement moneys and supply chains to support women and minority owned firms.
- Use your networks to advance your goals. Teach women of all ages to establish networks and use their economic power to advance and support your equality goals.
Roberta Liebenberg, Partner, Fine Kaplan LLP, Chair of the American Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession:
- Develop commitment CEOs, firm managing partners, and other executives to increase women in positions of leadership.
- Set percentage for increasing women in leadership positions. For example, the Austin Manifesto, resulting from a gathering in late 2009 of leading women lawyers and in-house counsel, set a goal of 30% women in leadership by 2020.
- Insist on accountability. Set benchmarks, develop metrics to measure how women are faring and whether the benchmarking goals are being met. Tie manager compensation to meeting the benchmarks and goals.
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