Recent criticism of the Federalist Society for hosting some all-male panels and conferences is, as Eugene explains, seriously misguided. As Eugene implies, the main goal for a conference or panel (in addition to quality) should be ideological and viewpoint diversity. Gender, like race and religion, sometimes correlates with ideological orientation and can serve as a crude proxy for it. However, in the case of academic panels and conferences, there is no need to use such a proxy because the views of potential participants can be much more accurately inferred from their previous writings and public statements. For example, I was invited to be on one of the panels at the Bork conference criticized by Eric Muller and Mary Dudziak because, as a libertarian, I strongly disagree with Judge Bork's proposals for government regulation of culture, which were the subject of the panel. The organizers could have relied on the crude proxy that most Russian Jewish immigrants and most atheists are more socially liberal than Bork is. However, they rightly relied instead on my publicly expressed views on the subject, which are a much more accurate indication of my position than my ethnicity, gender, or religious orientation.
A second problem is that it is dangerous to infer an organization's general policies from the composition of one or two individual panels. For example, Professor Dudziak criticizes the Federalist Society for organizing an all-male panel on the Supreme Court's terrorism cases. However, the rival liberal American Constitution Society has also held an all male panel on terrorism jurisprudence. Are they somehow biased against women as well? A more comprehensive analysis of Fed Soc panels would almost certainly reveal that women are represented in rough proportion to their general presence among elite lawyers and legal academics (in both of which groups women are still significantly less than 50% of the relevant population), with probably some additional disparity from the fact that there are proportionately fewer women among conservative and libertarian legal scholars than among liberal and left-wing ones. The latter is partly a function of the fact that women in general are somewhat more liberal than men, and partly a result of the reality that ideological gap between male and female legal academics is considerably greater than in the general public, with female Republicans being the most underrepresented group on law school faculties relative to their proportion of the general population. Although the Federalist Society tries hard to find liberal and left-wing speakers for most of its events, it is logical that conservative and libertarian speakers would be disproportionately represented at events sponsored by what is after all a conservative and libertarian organization.
Finally, Prof. Muller faults the Federalist Society for having a "male President, Senior Vice President, and Executive Vice President." However, Fed Soc Senior Vice President Lee Liberman Otis (one of the founders of the organization) is in fact a woman. The Fed Soc website Muller links to lists not only Otis, but quite a few other women in Fed Soc leadership positions. Many women serve in other prominent Fed Soc roles not listed at that particular site. For example as board members of the Society's practice groups on various issues. It is the practice groups (along with local chapters) that organize most Fed Soc-sponsored events. The Federalism and Separation of Powers Practice Group board has usually had 2-3 female members out of 6 or 7 total during the year that I have been a member of it myself.
Personally, I don't much care how many women are in the Fed Soc leadership (so long as female candidates are considered on the same criteria as men), except in so far as a higher figure might increase the appeal of libertarianism and small government conservatism to women more generally. However, it is wrong to suggest that the Fed Soc somehow excludes women from leadership roles or as panel speakers.
UPDATE: I see that Prof. Muller has acknowledged the error about Otis in an update to his original post. He was, perhaps, misled by her first name ("Lee"), which is more commonly a male name.
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Pwnt.
I would bet on finding more conservative women in fields related to business and tax law, and fewer in cultural and national security issues... pretty much the opposite of what you'd expect among left-leaning women. Women with high-powered careers aren't - by definition - going to be extreme cultural conservatives, and there are fewer women with the military background that national security types often have. But capitalism seems to work the same for everyone, and lots of women seem to like it.
I'm female, if anyone is still counting.
That may well be true. However, the proportion of nonliberal women in virtually every specialty is still lower than the proportion of nonliberal men in the same. Thus a partial explanation for the fact that, on average, there will be relatively fewer women on Fed Soc panels where conservatives and libertarians are disproportionately represented.
The relevant comparison is not the general population; it is the conservative/libertarian lawyers (or law professors or judges) who are at the peak of their careers. The Fed Soc panels, although often male, seem to correspond roughly with the 5-10% of lawyers who are of that age group, female, and conservative or libertarian.
Even now, only about a fifth (at most, a third) of Fed Soc student chapters are female. Thirty years from now, would we really expect that more than 1/3d of panelists be female?
Beyond that, wow, this sure touched a nerve. Again, the striking thing is that this wasn't just a four or five person panel, but rather a nineteen person panel, where the absence of women is, let's say, statistically less likely to happen by chance.
It's not the biggest deal in the world, and not my business, as I'm not a Fed Soc guy. But again I wonder what folks would think about a 19-member panel sponsored by a major legal organization on a general legal topic if the 19 were all women. You wouldn't wonder how that happened?
My claim was that, given a pool with both men and women to choose from, it's more unlikely to get an all-male panel if you have a 19-person panel than it is to get an all-male panel if you have a 4 or 5 person panel. If that's the claim to which you're taking exception, could you please explain my error? Because it seems pretty obviously correct to me.
Yes, law schools became substantially more diverse in the '80s and '90s. I wasn't at the panel; what is the median age of the panelists? Standard deviation?
The relevant pipeline is not the general population (51% female), or the population of lawyers (30ish% female), but conservative lawyers who are of the age (we'll bicker later) to be on this panel. My guess it that the latter group is something like 5% female or 10% female.
Well, as an academic in his 40s, I have a vested interest in arguing that folks my age are qualified to be on panels.
I would guess we don't actually disagree much, if at all. I'm sure you're right that the relevant pool of potential female speakers is significantly smaller than male speakers. 19-0 still seems rather striking, though, and there's a post by Alison N. in the other thread that works out the odds even if the numbers are 75% male or even 95% male.
But hey, again, it's not my organization.
The difference between 75% male and 95% male is pretty huge for the statistical purposes. The chances of there being no women are (.75)^19 for the former (0.4%) and (.95)^19 for the latter. If I hit the buttons on my desktop calculator correctly, there is a 29% chance that a 95% male group will yield 19/19 male panelists. (Someone who has a real calculator around, please do the math! :) )
Rather, I was taking issue with the assertion that it was "unlikely" for a 19 member randomly selected panel to be all male. We don't know if it's unlikely or not unless we know the makeup of the selection pool.
And Advisory Opinion, I'll take it that what you were criticizing me about re statistics was the point Alison N. corrected you on in the other thread (it doesn't matter that it wasn't randomly selected, in this case).
Advisory opinion: no, we cannot tell you the exact makeup of the relevant selection pool, but we can guess. Count back 20 or 30 years and see who was in law school; see who is practicing now; see how many are conservative or libertarian women. 5% is not an unreasonable guess.
Ah, we were posting at the same time. I believe I've made it clear in several posts that I understand the concept of the selection pool in these sorts of statistics. And as I've also said, if the number of women available to be selected is small, that just shifts the question to, "why are there so few women interested in speaking for the Federalist Society?"
But for the last time (I'm out of here now), it's not my organization, so those in it can worry about that.
It also shifts the "blame" (if there is such a thing) from those organising the panel to a) the Federalist Society in general; b) legal academia; or c) society in general (if it discourages talented conservative women from going into legal academia).
Or women for self-selecting out of the FedSoc?
Blame liberal oppression imo.
Do you think this happens (I assume it does) because the probabilities simply work out that way, or do you think that most FedSoc panel organizers make an effort to assure a more proportionate result?
The former.
Even assuming the .5% number is true, over a period of, say, 10 years of panels, the statistical likelihood is fairly high.
My point being that simply looking at this one panel is not enough to draw any conclusions. Small sample size, and all that.
"But some of my best friends are women!"
Wow... methinks the Volokh Conspiracy doth protest too much.
I misposted my reaction in the blogpost above. I had the privilege of going to a Rabbi Zimmerman's Torah class. He recounted the decision, which he was part of, of Reform Judaism's certifying body denying an application of a group in Indiana for a synagogue as they were self identifying as atheists. This was, as I reflect on it, somewhat in contrast to his reflection that the ancients could hold 2 contradictory views.
Wow... methinks the Volokh Conspiracy doth protest too much.
You do understand that the reason that "... but some of my best friends are black!" is frowned upon is that in the old days, when people said that, their "best friends" were actually their maids and butlers? When you actually have friends who are black, it's a fairly good defense that you're not a racist. Likewise, noting that the Federalist Society has a lot of female members seems to me to be a good response to accusations that they ... don't have enough female members.
Whenever I point readers to a source that has a problem, I tend to point out the problem. When I blogged about a similarly gender challenged program on teaching about the military in American history (and yes, there are top-notch female historians working on relevant topics), I noted the problem.
Now that we know that some folks seem particularly sensitive about this issue in the Federalist Society, perhaps we'll just keep an eye on it.
Because as I said in the previous thread, standard complaints -- yours included, AFAICT -- about 'representation' (or in this case 'gender challenged-ness') pretty much necessarily assume that the white males in question are incapable of comprehending, integrating, utilizing, and expresing such alternative viewpoints; i.e., that the selected panel, being white males, simply cannot and will not understand and provide such gender and 'race' differences in their presentations at the event themselves.
The general abstract form of your complaint necessarily requires that only members of particular 'races' and genders can meaningfully present the viewpoints of said 'races' and genders, and if that is the case, then you've automatically invalidated the purpose of presenting said viewpoints to members of other 'races and genders, i.e. to have said others comprehend them.
Because if they can comprehend them, then white males who actually have done so should be able to present them as well -- fundamentally obviating the need for them to be presented by members of such 'races' and genders.
And if they can't comprehend them, what is the point of presenting them? What then is the point of even trying to understand people of different 'races' or genders?
Not necessarily. For 2 reasons. First, representation of opposing views is not the ONLY goal the Fed Soc pursues in putting together events. They also try to make the case for conservatism and libertarianism. Second, conservative and libertarian scholars are more likely to accept Fed Soc invitations than liberal and left-wing ones. So even if the Fed Soc is completely evenhanded in its invitations, it would probably get more conservative and libertarian participants at its events, and therefore a disproportionately lower percentage of women.
I have no quarrel with Prof. Dudziak's characterization of her purpose. But she also criticized the Fed Soc for the alleged exclusion of women. That is the part of her post that I chose to respond to. I don't think I'm required to analyze every aspect of a post whenever I consider one aspect.
Prof. Dudziak has every right to "keep an eye" on this issue if she wants to. For my part, I would note that the "sensitivity" in question is not about the proportion of women who appear at various Fed Soc events, but about the implied accusation that any "underrepresentation" is due to gender bias or exclusionary practices of some kind. As I noted in the post, I am mostly indifferent to the percentage issue in and of itself.
I will be attending the Federalist Society's Student Leadership Conference this weekend, and judging from the materials I have received, there are many other female student chapter officers (mostly presidents) from around the country who will be in attendance. The assertion that the Federalist Society excludes females from participation in the organization is absolutely ridiculous. My gender has not once been made an issue since I joined the fed society almost 2 years ago. I would be severely disappointed if the fed society started trying to meet superficial gender quotas on its panels. I would much rather have quality and diversity of ideas.
And I agree with I.L...defending the society from unfounded accusations of gender bias does not equal sensitivity. Perhaps those making such unfounded accusations are the overly sensitive ones.