Susan Estrich's America

...But she actually establishes the opposite...

...When the time came for me to make a choice, for me, it was no choice...

...Consider a few examples among many...

...Estrich cites the example of Brenda Barnes, who left a top job at Pepsi because she couldn't be home for her children's bir±days...

...One of the younger female associates came into her office recently and said to her, 'I don't want your life.'" Surprisingly, Estrich also admits that some of the women who reach the top are not as qualified as men...

...There are no footnotes, and the bibliography contains erroneous citations...

...CEOs have certain types of power, but they don't have power over their own schedules...

...But I always knew what I wanted...

...When two groups are given the same job opportunities, and yet outcomes differ, discrimination is not necessarily the story...

...It describes part-time work as barely existing, when about a quarter of working women work part-time...

...But, to many mothers, power is the ability to come home at a reasonable time and have a family din-ner—or not to join the paid workforce at all...

...She's not planning to make partner...

...All the men I knew who'd gone to firms made partner...

...In the final chapter of Sex & Power, while she explains her decision to move to California, where her husband lived, trading her tenured Harvard professorship for a post at the less-prestigious University of Southern California, Estrich confesses, "Work was my escape, my source of satisfaction, my family...

...Similarly, in chapter seven she writes, "Mary is a lawyer in a firm with more than five hundred lawyers...

...The famous cases of Sears in the 1980s and Joe's Stone Crab restaurant in Miami, Florida, in the 1990s, where the EEOC brought charges of discrimination even though not one woman had complained, show that the system she proposes is alive and well...

...Executives are highly compensated, but they also have enormous responsibility to the corporation...

...But the determination both to count and demand accountability reflects a judgment that success is both possible and important: you're expected to succeed, not just try hard...

...It refers to Clinton's lawyer as William, instead of Robert, Bennett, confusing two prominent brothers...

...I knew I wanted children...

...But ±e fate of the average or low-income woman is not her principal concern...

...More fundamentally, there are reasons why corporations do not "job-share" executive positions...

...BY DIANA FURCHTGOTT-ROTH In & Power, law professor and television commentator Susan Estrich sets out to show that discrimination and barriers prevent women from attaining top jobs in law firms, academia, politics, and business...

...Knew' doesn't describe it...

...Rather, she explores the missed opportunities—^what she terms the lack of power—of women on the highest rungs...

...In order to measure progress, Estrich suggests that every quarter, American corporations be required to report the number of women at the top, just as they report profits...

...In the real world, equality of opportunity for men and women does not lead to precise equality of outcome, because, as Estrich repeatedly shows, men and women are different...

...But the book's central failing is a lack of intellectual integrity...

...As Estrich demonstrates but is too ideologically blinded to admit, human nature is such that this is unlikely to change soon...

...She suggests that society identify and change both written and unwritten rules ±at disadvantage women, rules centered around what Estrich sees as the inherent conflict between the demands of raising a family and achieving professional advancement...

...In the first chapter, Estrich writes, "In the first five minutes, a female law review president will tell you that she doesn't want to live like a man or the hard-driving women of my generation...

...And that's precisely what Estrich has proved: When given a shot at the eighty-hour weeks and hectic travel required to get to the top of a major firm or corporation, many women (like many men) just say no...

...Two years, then pregnancy, then who knows...

...Susan Estrich, mother of two, knows firsthand the overwhelming attraction of motherhood, yet she calls on young women to make a different choice from hers and instead to fulfill the mission of feminism and finish the revolution...

...I have never been so certain of anything in my life...

...In Estrich's world, corporations exist not to produce goods and services for consumers and provide returns to shareholders, but to tackle difficult societal problems...

...She is a high-powered partner who does transactions, works crazy hours, and has to travel...

...Motherhood, of course, is the reason for the relatively small number of women at the top...

...While compensation can easily be divided, responsibility for both success and failure cannot be shared...

...In the same vein, she declares, "My girlfriends from law school started pulling back five to ten years after we graduated...

...Estrich admits that legislation has given women legal equality, but argues that unconscious discrimination persists and that our society has "policies and practices ±at exclude half the population from achieving ±eir full potential in the public world...

...She has two kids under seven...

...Despite her assertions to the contrary, major corporations already face what many regard as a quota, in that they can be investigated and prosecuted by the EEOC for employing too few women...

...She cites a study showing that fewer women than men had attained leadership positions in corporations before being invited to join the board...

...In her own words, "A workplace without women should be suspect and scrutinized accordingly...

...ferent preferences from men and make different career choices: Many do not want to put in the hours to get to the top if it means they have to sacrifice family time...

...If you fail, you have to explain why, and it better be good...

...To Estrich, power is getting fat paychecks and making decisions that affect large numbers of people...

...In particular, Estrich suggests opening schools earlier and keeping ±em open later to give mothers help with child care...

...I have never, ever heard a male law review president talk like that...

...Biological alarms blaring, they went in-house, of counsel, PTA...

...Another explanation is that the two groups have systematically different preferences, both in terms of the desirability of particular jobs and professions and in terms of hours of work...

...Presumably, if two women shared the CEO position, each would get paid only half the salary and have half the power—not a useful way to give women more of each...

...In anecdote after anecdote, including several based on her own career, she shows that women have difDiana Furchtgott-Roth is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and co-author of The Feminist Dilemma: When Success is Not Enough (AEI Press, forthcoming...

...Estrich seems unaware that all major employers, as well as all employers doing business with the federal government, already have to report this information to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on an annual, if not on a quarterly, basis...

...Heidi Miller left Citigroup and went to Priceline.com well before the book went to press...

...Estrich does not discuss either the practicality or the cost of her recommendations: She simply assumes that the expense would be absorbed by the corporations...

...she keeps a lot of balls in the air...

...It's not a quota, any more than profit projections are...

...It mistakenly attributes a well-known study by professor June O'Neill to the Pacific Research Institute...

...She proposes allowing women lawyers, for example, to make partner in their forties, ra±er than in ±eir childbearing years, and encouraging job-sharing for partnerships and high-level corporate positions...

...Sex & Power is riddled with inaccuracies...

...And she gives the example of a friend on a corporate board who describes being at a disadvantage because she is one of the few members who has never run a major company...

...For that matter, Estrich herself falls short of the standards of scholarship expected from a powerful, tenured law professor...