UNIT D: BLOG 27

BLOG 27: Competency Gap



Competency, the ability to perform or handle a certain task, situation, or event. The competency gap is referring to the gap between males and females and how competent females are compared to males in their profession. The competency gap we are dealing with is the fact that some people still feel that women are not as competent as males in the legal profession. AS discussed before males dominant females in the shear number of lawyers and people in the legal profession. In a room or firm if there are more males just by the shear numbers alone people will think that males dominate just because there is more of them. A big part of this problem is the generation gap. Older generations, especially males, think that women are not as capable as males in the legal profession.

This gap, although some people both men and women state that this gap is gone, still exist today. An example of how it still exists is that women believe they have to work harder than males for a certain position or place. Women still feel like they are having to prove themselves. Since there are less female lawyers they think that they lack the ability to be a lawyer and to be in this field. In firm people still look at females and males differently and are still stereotyping them. They are giving the women the more "domestic"tasks around the office more than males. An example of this is from the readings in Ch. 4 when a female lawyer was sitting in a room with male co-workers and out of everyone there is she was the first person asked always to make a copy, go get coffee, or to get lunch. These tasks state that there is still a competency gap in the work place. Then some men will do things to make sure there this gap still stays there.

Men try strategically plan things to their advantage and to a disadvantage to women based on knowing that these women have different and certain obligations because of their home and family lives. One males talks about how he was working a disposition with a women. To make this event go in his favor he would try to make this process take as long as possible or move it down to make it later in the day. He does this knowingly that they women has to get her children or go home to take care of the family to try to ruin her case and opportunity to win. Women lawyers some times will get "grilled"or tested more intensely than males to see if they can handle it and past the test. Women feel that they are always being tested and that they have to prove themselves.