Gender and the advantage of new institutional frameworks: The legal profession in India

Gender scholars have offered distinct accounts at different levels of analysis (individual, interactional and institutional) to explain how gender based inequality at the workplace is created and reinforced. Most inclusive of these accounts have been those that integrate all three levels of analysis and urge us to think of gender as “structure” (Risman: 1998) or a “frame” (Ridgeway: 2011). These explanations are compelling because they illustrate the persistent nature of accepted gender hierarchies and the challenge of overcoming these set societal beliefs and expectations.

While much of this research about the structure and creation of gender based distinctions in the workplace is both relevant and important, I only use it as a background for pursuing my more limited research question which concerns new institutional sites where gender stereotypes are not set and where gendered expectations have not yet been formed. What happens in such “sites of innovation” (Ridgeway: 2011)? Is the diffuse background characteristic of gender always salient? Or is there some leeway in negotiating new gender expectations in new institutions that do not have a precedent for gender-based inequality? When the work being done is not determinately sex-typed, can women take advantage of the ambiguous culture?

 Over the last two decades, India has responded to its call as an aggressively emerging economy by creating a new set of “global” law firms that attract and offer seemingly gender neutral advantages for its associates. Preliminary interviews with female lawyers in these firms suggest that women are not disadvantaged in these firms in the same ways that traditional accounts of the legal profession suggest. My research attempts to navigate this new territory innovation and inequality in the legal profession.