New Haven Independent

Arterton — who became the 100th female district judge in U.S. history when then-President Clinton nominated her — shared her progress through politics, law, and family with a captive audience as the keynote speaker for the Yale Law School’s “Legally Female” conference on Saturday. The conference, in collaboration with the national blog Ms. JD, gathered women from across the legal profession for panels and discussions about what it means to be female in law today.

Arterton, who sits in the U.S. District Courthouse in New Haven, never imagined herself as a judge. She didn’t even attend law school until she was 30 and married with an 18-month-old daughter.

She grew up in the “silent ’50s,” she told her audience. She eventually came around from her tomboy status to happily win “Best-Looking Girl in the Senior Class” at her high school. A Mount Holyoke undergraduate education landed her in Washington, D.C., as a congressional press secretary. “Being a lawyer,” she said, “was just about as far from my mind as sheep-shearing — but the times, they were a-changin’.”

Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated not long after Arterton settled in D.C. The country was reeling. When she walked past the Capitol and saw guards with machine guns, she knew “something was desperately wrong with our country.” Vietnam, Watergate, the women’s movement — her world was quickly turned upside down.

As she became more involved in politics, Arterton began to embrace feminism: “I learned the joy of solidarity, and I finally loved being a woman.” She rattled to her appreciative lawyer audience a list of important court cases setting new gender equality standards and whipped out an original copy of Gloria Steinem’s Ms. Magazine with the “Wonder Woman for President” cover. Her political involvement put her in constant contact with courts and lawyers; soon she was one of an unprecedented number of women streaming into American law schools.

After graduating from the Northeastern law school, Arterton joined her husband, a Yale professor, and soon established herself as a key legal figure in New Haven. Long before she became the judge who arbitrated the New Alliance bank scandal or sentenced the rare map thief, she focused on labor law and employee rights at the New Haven firm Garrison and Arterton.

One of only 15 female lawyers in all of New Haven (who gathered for lunch once a month), Arterton, a mother of two, has managed to avoid “mommy-tracking” in her illustrious career. Despite the appearance of rapid progress for women in the legal field, Arterton said she believes that this practice and the limited choices facing women trying to balance career and family are a serious threat to further advancement. Though she was impressed with the “wonderful sense of energy” at Saturday’s conference, she professed herself disturbed by a “lack of urgency” in cementing the presence of female lawyers and judges. Arterton described the much-talked about choices between career and family as “rotten choices, and I think for the most part that men don’t have to make them.”

This gender gap has clearly affected the demographics of the legal profession, as Arterton showed her audience through various statistics: Far fewer women with two or more children than men in the same position have climbed high on the law ladder; even today, only about 20 percent of U.S. District judges are female.

“In my view, there is simply no reason in this day and age why these numbers aren’t pushing 50 percent,” Arterton said. She gave an example of gender stereotypes present in the courtroom: harsh female rulings are often called “cold” and “unfeeling,” when, she insisted, the same rulings would never be described in those terms if issued by a man.

So where do women in law go from here? “I encourage you not to be passive, not to be complacent” about balancing work and family, Arterton said. Her own life has taught her that “change from within can be a powerful tool,” and that one of the worst things one can do is accept a situation because it seems to be the only option. “Women lawyers have been and will continue to be a huge political force capable of affecting huge change.” Recognizing and acting upon this potential for change, Arterton concluded, is what it means to be “Legally Female.”