Women in The United States Judiciary - Conflict of Family Life

Conflict of Family Life

Finally, one of the biggest issues that came up in the surveys facing women judges, women lawyers, and women professionals in all capacities, is the issue of managing both a family and a career. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has observed that "women professionals still have primary responsibility for the children and the housekeeping, spending roughly twice as much time on these cares as do their professional husbands." This uneven split in responsibility often will restrict a woman, not only from spending time at work, but also keep her from the traditional social and political networking required for advancement in the field. The "traditional" response to these problems has been to "give" women a choice of (1) delaying or forgoing family life to focus on a career or (2) place women in a 'track' where they will not achieve as much, but will have the opportunity to have a family. Many feminist scholars and women judges reject this view as outdated and inherently unfair to women. The answer, they insist, must require both men and the employers such as courts to share in burden of childrearing.