Quote this

In addition to occasionally featuring Breakfast Club quotes, I'll also be featuring quotes that are more relevant to this blog, including quotes by women lawyers, quotes about men by women, quotes about feminism and quotes about lawyers and the law in general. So, you can look forward to a few "Quote this" posts each week.

Here's today's quote:

• When we talk about equal pay for equal work, women in the workplace are beginning to catch up. If we keep going at this current rate, we will achieve full equality in about 475 years. I don't know about you, but I can't wait that long. --Lya Sorano

Based on my experience on this earth thus far, I'm inclined to think that she's correct. We've got a long way to go, baby.

As far as I can tell, we've got a lot of lip service about equality in our culture, but not a lot of equality in reality. Women are treated as equals while we obtain our educations, but once we emerge from the hallowed halls of our undergraduate and graduate institutions, all of the egalatarian talk disintigrates into thin air. Our biological clocks run smack dab into the middle of our career ladders with nary an ounce of acknowledgment of this problem or support from society as a whole, let alone from our colleagues or superiors. It's our problem and ours alone.

And those few women who have made it to the top at the expense of their marriages, families, children and psyches have no helpful advice for the rest of us and tend to be the least sympathetic to our plight.

They'd rather that we do as they did--have one kid or no kids. Cart the kids that we do have off to day care in their PJs at 5:30 am, and leave it to the day care to change them into clothes and feed them breakfast. Pick them up at 6:30 pm, or better yet have a nanny pick them up, since neither parent can get off of work before dinnertime. Hire someone to prepare meals on a daily basis, since there's no time for that, nor is there even time to order take out, since no one's home before 7 pm. Hire someone to run errands, since there's no time for that--even on weekends, since no one actually has an entire weekend off these days. Send out the laundry and dry cleaning. Hire someone to clean the house. Hire someone to do just about everything that can't be done from within the confines of a law office.

And once your kids are in grade school, the only thing that changes is the nanny gets them off to school and cares for them upon their return home in the afternoon. And, when the summertime comes, send your kids to sleepover camp for the entire summer. And when they get older--too old for a nanny--just hope to high heavan that they don't spend the countless hours alone in your huge empty home banging the cute boy next door after smoking a few joints. And, if they do, pray that they use protection. And look forward to holding their hand in rehab (and sinking a lot of dinero into it, too) a few years down the road.

And, make sure that you take your Paxil, your Zoloft, your Ambien and whatever drugs you need to make it through the day and night.

Yep, I want to be just like you you women partners who advise me to "take a deep breath." Just kill me now.

(As for those of you who might pipe in with "What about the husband? Where does he fit into all this?" He does fit in, and he's struggling along with his wife. I'll address that more fully in another post, but let's not blame this issue on husbands. It's a societal and cultural problem and is quite complex. Uncooperative husbands are the least of it.)