How Deeper Dialogues Among Women Can Bolster Diversity and Inclusion

Liu admits that she felt hesitant about moderating the program—intended to be a sharing of experiences around race and gender by women of color and white women—when first approached by Dechert’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) team in tandem with its Global Women’s Initiative. “I thought, ‘This is going to be a difficult conversation. I didn’t want to feel that one group was pitted against another,’” Liu recalls.

But as co-chair of the firm’s Asian Affinity Group and a participant in the Global Women’s Initiative, she also recognized an opportunity. “This topic of intersectionality, probably now more than ever, is having a real profound moment,” Liu points out. “It was something we wanted to discuss in light of the events of the last year—the pandemic, BLM (Black Lives Matter), Stop Asian Hate, etc.”

The panel brought together two white women, one Latina, one African American, and another woman who, like Liu, is Asian American.

Personal stories about how overlapping identities such as race and ethnicity may affect women—often in ways that are distinctly different from what men of color or white women experience—lie at the core of the term “intersectionality,” a concept first articulated by scholar and law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. Liu notes that the Dechert conversation was “incredibly eye-opening.”

Linda Goldstein, a panel member and partner at Dechert, agrees. “I’ve been part of a lot of diversity and inclusion seminars over the years. This was one of the most emotionally direct. It was very worthwhile,” says Goldstein, a litigator who has been practicing for more than 35 years.

Breaking a Bubble and Building Allies

The Dechert program grew from a multipronged rollout of This Talk Isn’t Cheap: Women of Color and White Women Attorneys Find Common Ground, a 2020 publication of the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession. https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/women/thistalkisntcheapreport10_23_update_final.pdf.

The project began in 2016 as an initiative championed by Michele Coleman Mayes during her three-year term (2014–2017) as chair of the Commission, and she continued to shepherd it after her tenure ended. Mayes, vice president, general counsel, and secretary for the New York Public Library, wanted to bridge a gap that she believes prevents women of color and white women from working together more closely to address gender bias as well as concerns about diversity, equity, and inclusion.

As an African American lawyer, Mayes says she often heard private conversations among women of color in the profession about obstacles that they were encountering. “The little, dirty conversation that would take place behind closed doors is—‘You know that woman doesn’t get me.’ And yet we’re supposed to all be on the same team. And that wasn’t the case. The women of color would suffer in silence. And I didn’t want it to be silent anymore,” Mayes explains.

Research by the Commission since its founding in 1987 looked at how women, as one generic group, were faring, without studying additional obstacles that women of color might face. When, in 2006, the Commission released its first separate study on women of color in the law, Visible Invisibility: Women of Color in Law Firms, the findings showed disparate and blunted progress, even compared to the slow advances of white women. Today, the gains are still miniscule: Women of color account for a mere 3.3 percent of equity partners at law firms, according to the 2020 Vault/MCCA (Minority Corporate Counsel Association) Law Firm Diversity Survey Report. “Despite increases in hiring and promotions, women of color remain significantly underrepresented at partnership and leadership levels and overrepresented among attorney departures,” according to the report. (Women in total held 22.3 percent of equity partner positions, a sign of “progress,” the report notes.)

Convinced that women of color and white women needed to better understand their commonalities and differences, Mayes proposed a more reflective approach. The title, This Talk Isn’t Cheap, is a counterpoint to the common refrain of “talk is cheap” in public discourse. “In many ways, talk isn’t cheap—it’s your currency—because it allows you to begin, if you are so inclined, an honest way to broach a topic that maybe everyone is uncomfortable with, some more than others,” Mayes says.

In this case, the talk is among women. “I very consciously wanted it to be woman to woman,” Mayes notes. “The question is, ‘how can we move forward collectively?’ You can’t solve a problem you can’t talk about.”

Not everyone even saw the problem. Mayes recalls how, during the planning stage, she described the idea of opening better communications between white women and women of color to another lawyer. “The white woman to whom I was speaking said, ‘Is this an issue?’” Mayes recounts with a touch of disbelief. “I said in my most sympathetic tone, ‘Of course it is.’”

Focus Groups Share Experiences

The project has several components, beginning with focus groups of women lawyers conducted by Dr. Arin N. Reeves of Nextions LLC. The volunteer participants, interviewed in discrete affinity groups, included 49 women of color (29 percent Black or African American, 25 percent Hispanic or Latina, 20 percent Asian or South Asian, 16 percent biracial or multiracial, and 10 percent American Indian or Native Alaskan) and 45 white women.

Women of color in the focus groups were asked what they wanted white women to know, and, conversely, white women lawyers were asked what they wanted women of color to know. The answers were revealing. Women of color wanted white women to know that combining race and ethnicity makes the gender experience different, but also that not all women of color can be lumped together. They also saw white women as being defensive when faced with racial and ethnic biases, making it thorny territory to traverse. The white women who participated wanted to know the perspectives of women of color and said they were interested in identifying their own unconscious biases but didn’t know how to begin conversations without seeming to be offensive or rude.

The resulting 21-page report, chock-full of quotes and personal recounts of experiences, was paired with the equal-length toolkit that includes specific tips on how to dig deeper in discussions about the intersectional impacts of race, ethnicity, and gender in the practice of law. https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/women/thistalkisntcheap_toolkit10_26final.pdf.

Digging into Diverse Perceptions

The complementary toolkit includes a roadmap for panel or small group discussions, a facilitator’s guide, and slides and video vignettes by performer Anna Deavere Smith on topics of belongingness, identity, brokenness, and poverty versus privilege. Suggestions for a meaningful conversation are included, such as this tip: Gently remind participants that the discussion might feel uncomfortable.

“A toolkit is a different way of igniting the conversation. It adds an active component so that it’s not just research that is on a shelf,” says Aracely Muñoz, a current Commission member who helped to develop the materials. “We often hear firms should do this or that. This toolkit gives individuals an opportunity to take responsibility for making change and bridging gaps within the workplace.

“It gives everyone agency to do something,” adds Muñoz, who serves as director of the Lawyers Network and the Washington, D.C., office of the nonprofit Center for Reproductive Rights.

The approaches in the toolkit give space for nonmajority women to express their needs and concerns in their own words. “There are biases that we’re not aware of,” Muñoz says. “People don’t intend to create barriers, but they do.”

As a Latina, Muñoz says she sometimes hears inappropriate comments about how well she speaks English. “No one wants to believe that they are being racist. No one wants to say, ‘You’re being racist.’ On both ends, it’s an uncomfortable place to be. But it’s necessary if we are to move the needle in some way.

“The last year and everything that has happened in this ‘reckoning’ have sparked some important conversations, and they’re not pretty,” Muñoz continues. “Simply because we are lawyers, it doesn’t mean they are going to get any prettier.

The key, according to Muñoz, is active listening.

Seeking a Different Path

The Talk initiative continued to expand with increased outreach. Under the guidance of current Commission Chair Maureen Mulligan, the group conducted a CLE-credited webinar, available from the ABA (ABA On-Demand CLE CW2011TTCOLC).

Next came the launch of A Day of Conversation, in which the Commission invited women lawyers to register and set up an event, using the toolkit. The day of outreach, set for April 27, 2021, resulted in 149 downloads of the toolkit and 69 registrations from law firms, nonprofits, corporate counsel, government offices, and even judicial staff, according to Ashleigh Hill, program specialist for the Commission.

Wendy Shiba, a retired general counsel and former Commission member, also worked on developing This Talk Isn’t Cheap. As someone of Asian Pacific American heritage, Shiba says she’s treated as a “perpetual foreigner,” no matter that she was born and raised in northern Ohio. “But where are you really from?” people ask.

During her 40-year career, Shiba says she frequently bumped up against the “model minority” myth, casting a stereotype that Asian Pacific Americans, while smart and hardworking, are passive and lacking in leadership qualities.

“One of the outcomes we hoped for with this project is that white women who are in a position of seniority and influence in their organizations would be better sensitized to the issues of women of color who are often more junior and don’t have the position and the voice to advocate for themselves,” Shiba observes.

After setting up a panel discussion at her law firm with four partners around the concepts of Talk Isn’t Cheap, Lorraine McGowen, a partner at Orrick, became a believer in the power of the conversation. “It exceeded my expectations. Our people have read the studies,” she says, noting that, as an African American, she considers Orrick to be a leader in diversity and inclusion. “But this was personal. This goes beyond reading a report with a bunch of statistics.”

“All of the panelists said they felt raw—that’s how candid the discussion was,” McGowen continues. “One of the partners acknowledged that she always thought that she was great on race until we had this conversation, and she recognized that she was really focused on gender but had not focused enough on intersectionality. And that meant a lot.”

As a result, McGowen says, Orrick has become more focused on including women of color at all levels of its activities. “Hearing from peers takes away the myth that something like that couldn’t happen here,” she points out. “We can always do better.”