Friday, September 9, 2011

What a cheerful news day!

Warning:  If you are having a happy Friday, you might not want to read these articles.

The ABA Journal email that arrived in my inbox is just chock full of cheerful articles today.  The first and most relevant one for our purposes is entitled "Legal Field Is Nation's Most Difficult Field For Job Placement, Employment Website Says."  Read it and weep.  The site, SimplyHired.com, claims that there is apparently one job opening for every 100 working lawyers.  Does that figure include the unemployed attorneys?  Probably not, which means the outlook is even worse than they know.

Second, there is an article which discuss women in the workforce.  It is called  "Survey Reveals Profile of Unhappy Worker: She's Unmarried, 42, and a Lawyer or Doctor."

There are always tons of stories about how unhappy attorneys are in the legal field. That's not to say that ALL attorneys are unhappy.  But a field that many people enter by default because they do not know what else to do lends itself to that sort of career dissatisfaction, if they are able to find a legal job at all these days.  But I am always suspect when surveys claim that professional women are particularly unhappy.  It seems easy to manipulate that data for a political agenda that encourages women to work part time or stay at home all together, as if very many women or men have that luxury nowadays.

12 comments:

  1. When I was applying to law school, I ran across one middle-aged gentleman who asked me point blank, "Why in God's name, would you want to be an attorney?!"

    I was on my way to a class, and I talked to him for a few minutes. According to this guy, his father was a workaholic lawyer, who regularly beat up his wife and kids - after coming home late drunk and exhausted. I wish I had listened to him, when he mentioned that law is for miserable people.

    Even those who "enjoy" practicing law seem to be off. In essence, they are often small, miserable people who enjoy making others miserable and upset.

    By the way, I also do not buy the argument that most professional women are unhappy. However, there is no denying the fact that two-worker families have less time to spend with their children and with each other. This undermines the nuclear family, in terms of stability and support. I work in a company where pretty much EVERY female co-worker is divorced, unmarried and pretty miserable. One co-worker is 31, beautiful and divorced. To be fair, she is not unhappy. The work world beats people down, though.

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  2. Booo hooo I'm Nando no one handed me a job so I quit booo hooo

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  3. ^^ there's a small, miserable bloke now

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  4. You always make me laugh, Nando! Thanks for that.

    I tend to think the articles about unhappy professional women do not paint the entire picture. A lot of the married professional women I know work the same number of hours as their husbands, but they are expected to perform "double duty" at home afterward (take care of dinner, pick up the kids from practice, plan weekend activities), which probably renders them dissatisfied with life in general, which necessarily includes their work.

    Also, I don't think the article specified whether the unmarried women had never been married or were divorced. Kind of important information when considering where the dissatisfaction comes from. A lot of divorced or never married professional women have children at home, and like many married women, are expected to bear the brunt of the household duties in addition to their professional ones.

    I am not surprised that the survey found men to be happier overall. Women have more to be unhappy about. The advent of modern technology in the form of automatic household appliances was marketed as a savior to women - think of how much time they'd save without so many grueling chores to do! Turns out, it only led to more work. With so much more time on their hands, women could work outside the home, only part-time of course, since they still had to be home for the kids. And we all know where that eventually led - the two-income household that leaves many women with two full-time jobs, one that pays and one that doesn't.

    Interesting article.

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  5. Thanks for the link, I liked looking at all the ABA reader comments regarding the low unemployment article.Yeah about the unhappy woman article, so funny a relative fits that category and just quit her attorney job. I like my law job now, but I might have to check back in when I reach 42. LOL.

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  6. I always question these studies. I've not read an article that professional 42-year-old men who aren't married are unhappy. No, that picture is reserved for women who must be attached to a man in order to be happy. It's sad that women are still seen not for themselves, but in their relationship status. That's not how men are portrayed.

    Maybe it makes a difference whether it's law or some other field, but aren't men lawyers unhappy, too? I know plenty of professional women in their 40s and 50s who are doing fine in the happiness quota and would be quite surprised to learn that they are supposed to be miserable. None of them are lawyers.

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  7. Helloooooo!!! The article said lawyer or "doctor"! But you conveniently forgot that Rose, of course!

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  8. Did I forget it? Or did I post the full name of the article in the link? For that matter, didn't my post express skepticism about the article?

    Wow, your reading comprehension is pretty poor.

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  9. It is also easy to manipulate the data for a feminist agenda, promoting the idea that women need to be treated with greater favouritism, and that is what I assumed they were doing.

    ReplyDelete

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