Women and minorities should work three times as much (or more)

In my youth I had a revealing experience.  I was studying at a night university, and during day time, I worked as a typist.  Since I became a typist after I became a pianist, typing at the speed of speech was easy for me.  Since I studied at a linguistic university, correcting the author's mistakes, spelling, grammatical and sometimes stylistic, was also not difficult - and garnered me respect of my boss.


Yet, there appeared a problem.


I studied at the evening department of the Moscow Linguistic University.  I had loads of homework.  A language is not something that can be faked, you either know the words and expressions or you don't.  There is no cutting corners in language studies, and anybody who tells you that you can learn in your sleep or in an ultra fast fashion... Well, I don't believe it. 


I worked during day time.  I spent nearly 3 hours in commute every day.  I had to study sometime during the day.  For that reason, I consulted the labor norms for my job (in the Soviet Russia there were such beasts actually) and verified that a typist must type 24 pages a day, and not more.


I typed 25 pages from 9 am  to noon and then opened my textbooks.


Some people in my department started to complain about me to my boss claiming that since I CAN do more per day, I MUST do more per day.  And since the second typist who worked with me can produce only 12 pages a day (!), she should not be pressured for more than that.  For the same salary.


I was lucky that my boss was (1) an intelligent man;  (2) I was the only one who could read his handwriting;  (3) I corrected his spelling mistakes.  For that reason, I could graduate from my night university since he allowed me to work my norm till noon, and then to study. 


When I graduated from the Linguistic University and started to work for a British company as a translator, my British boss, apparently without any bad feelings to anybody, as a joke actually, told me once - "you know about America, women and minorities should work three times as much".  I did not believe him.  Now I do.


Time and again, when I ask for an adjournment of an impossible deadline from a court, a different standard is used than when a male attorney (especially a male attorney working for the government) asks for an adjournment.


I have to pour my soul out to a judge, usually also a male, and I have to account for every hour in all days leading to the deadline, including weekends - and I still get an adjournment denied, and a man may quote simply that he has "other litigation" pending - and will get an adjournment for the asking.


That happened to me both in state and federal courts.


Sometimes I am simply flabbergasted by the callousness of judges who deny adjournments, even though it is clear that they are putting on me deadlines that are physically impossible to accomplish.  No male attorney-opponent was denied adjournments when he asked, and usually such adjournments were granted for the asking, and even if I objected. 


Any attorney is the voice of her client, and if she is not given adjournments when several courts impose the same deadlines on large motions which cannot be done at the same time, her clients necessarily suffer without any fault of hers, because there are 24 hours in a day and a single attorney, no matter how fast she formulates her ideas, how experienced she is on the subject of the motion, how well she researches and how fast she types, is still one solo attorney and simply cannot multiply hours in a day to do what courts sometimes impose. 


I don't believe judges who impose such deadlines do not understand what they are doing, because they do give adjournments freely to male attorneys, for the asking, and judges come to the bench after a minimum of 10 years experience as attorneys - that's a requirement in New York State.  I believe, the double standard in giving adjournments to male attorneys and not giving adjournments to a female, and a foreign-born female, is intentional - and the purpose is to teach that foreign woman who got into the "old boys' club job" - that the old boys still rule the game.


The purpose is also to set the female attorney up for failure - and then claim that she failed and she is incompetent.  I am lucky so far I was able to meet those deadlines anyway.  By working three times as much, or more.


When  I am exhausted, I blog - this way I relax.  When I blog at the end of the day, and a very full day, no matter how much I did that day, how many pleadings I filed that day, I get aggressive comments by opposing counsel that if I blog, I must have some forces left to do some more (even if I put in 14 hour working days every day) and I am not entitled to that adjournment that I am asking for.


When I hear that, I have a flashback right back to Soviet Russia - "if she CAN do more than an average worker, she MUST do more".  Do I, really?


I guess, my British boss was correct.  In America, at least women should work three times as much - and then some.