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Comment by a8da6b0c91d | Hacker News Reader

These articles are always oddly delusional about the number of high achieving women. They seem to think having the job title "lawyer" means high status. I'm not convinced this trope of lonely "high achieving" women is a phenomenon with any numerical significance.

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"High-achieving" is used loosely here. If you define "high achieving" as CEO's and hedge fund managers, there are way more men in that group, but if you define it as "college educated desk-job professional" then at least within the 22-35 cohort, there are more women or it is rapidly becoming the case that there are more women. The graduation ratio for college is almost 60 women for every 40 men these days.

My understanding is that men in that age cohort earn more at all income brackets. The apparent measure of status used by the writers seems delusionally fixated on credentials. It's just interesting this is never remarked upon in the many, many articles alleging large numbers of "accomplished" women out there with no male peers. Accomplished at what? Third tier graduate education and a $70K office job?

An individual man may earn more than an individual woman, but in broad strokes, with more women graduating college than men, you're going to see more of them in "professional" jobs, especially in younger cohorts.

Credentials are an imperfect, but reasonable, proxy for career trajectory; if you have two big groups of people, and one has a lot more degrees than the other, you'd expect that group to be more successful over the course of their careers.

One thing to consider is that it appears that we already have more graduates than professional careers. If we assume that all college graduate men and women are perfectly equal in the workplace, then the larger group of women will be more likely to find themselves without a professional career due to lack of opportunity, and thus will have a lower average income.

A lot of people are extremely touchy about their third-tier M.A.s, including probably a lot of the people who write these kinds of articles.

I think they are referring to how they perceive themselves. While you are likely correct that many "lawyers" are not "high status" by objective measures (Australia may be different than the US in this regard, as well), there is substantial cultural status associated with completing law school (may be changing now). However, most people who complete law school consider themselves higher status than if they did not complete it.

Lawyers are on the higher end of status things. In line with commerce peeps and engineers.

If I was to make a ball-park guess, fewer people sue each other here, so there are fewer lawyers and the career path stays prestigious.

Assuming you are talking about the relative prestige of lawyers in Australia? In the US, they are still generally considered high status by the culture, although those of us who have been in the world are much more aware of the fact that just going to law school often reduces your status by objective measures like buying power and employment options (I am a law school dropout). But, most JD earners consider themselves higher status than they would be without their JD.

Yes on prestige. Last I checked lawyers make an excellent living here too. University fees are less crippling because you aren't forced to make repayments unless you are earning over a certain amount.

People who actually practice as corporate lawyers make a good living in the US. That's a tiny fraction of people who actually go to law school.

As in any profession, there is a spectrum.

Graduating from a top 5 law program, clerking for a Supreme Court justice, being a partner or on partner-track in a top firm, teaching at a top university - this represents the 1% among the legal profession, and very high status.

Being an "average" lawyer from an "average" tier law program means average status, unless you break out from that and do something exceptional or entrepreneurial.

I, too, would love to see some actual data around this.

It means "rich".

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