There are many ways in which women are excluded from the conversation. Women are interrupted more, given fewer opportunities to speak, and, of course, subjected to mansplaining. When women do get to speak, men tend not to listen—as the old joke goes: “That is an interesting point, Ms. Jones, perhaps one of the men here would like to make it.”
The social science literature suggests, however, that women’s exclusion decreases as their power increases. So when my article with Dylan Schweers, “Justice, Interrupted” showed that female Supreme Court justices are interrupted three times as often as the male justices at oral argument, it received considerable attention. So much so that two Supreme Court justices noted its impact: Justice Ginsburg said that the article had got her attention and predicted that it may well affect the behavior of the justices; Justice Sotomayor later confirmed that the study has changed the dynamics of the Court, inspiring some of the male justices to apologize and the Chief to act more as a referee.
It struck me as ironic then, if not entirely surprising, to read a recent blog post by a man, Adam Feldman, that virtually erased my contribution to this area and seemed to appropriate the impact of “Justice, Interrupted” to himself. My article was addressed directly by two Supreme Court justices, yet it apparently rated no more than a “see also” link at the end of list primarily consisting of Feldman’s own writings. For Feldman to claim that the justices were responding to “these works” borders on misattribution.
The same post also underrates the contribution of another woman, Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones. Mencimer was in fact the first person to note the gendered pattern of interruptions on the Court, or at least the first to do so in print. She made this observation on the basis of numbers provided in a blog post by Feldman, but Feldman had not recognized the pattern himself. Feldman subsequently claimed that “[t]hese imbalances were identified” by him, but nothing indicates that to be so, at least not until a woman had pointed it out to him. Only more than a year later did Feldman (working with gender politics expert Rebecca Gill) explore the issue in detail, in an unpublished working paper, written at about the same time as my article with Dylan Schweers was under review at the Virginia Law Review, where it was accepted for publication in March of 2017.
Women are encouraged to be less assertive than men—I have written about this well-established effect in the context of criminal procedure. We are certainly expected not to challenge a man who takes credit for our work. But if we can’t even stand up for ourselves in order to get fair recognition for our work on gender dynamics, then what hope is there?
By Tonja Jacobi