Politics,Feminism and Women's Professional Orientations:

The purpose of this study was to construct a typology of professional orientation of women lawyers based on their political identity, professional interests and patterns of institutional participation. Using factor and cluster analysis, four orientations were identified. Variations on instrumental-market and feminist themes are at the core of the orientations, and each is related to the broader political identities of the women and to the types of action they recommend as effective means of correcting sex-based inequities in the profession. Whereas the majority of lawyers adopt one of these perspectives in relatively undiluted form, the orientations of two small leadership groups are more complex. Although scholars believe that the entry of women will have important effects on legal practice and discourse, the results of this study, indicating diversity of orientation among women, suggest that the realization of this expectation is contingent on a variety of factors.