Holding Women to a Higher Standard (letter to the editor)

Dear Editor,

It is of concern that the rape of women is not taken as seriously as it should be. One example involves the rape of a young woman on campus in 2014 at St. Paul’s, the elite boarding school in Concord, New Hampshire. Another was the “Stanford Rape Case” of June 17, 2015. In this case, a young unconscious woman was raped after a fraternity party and was unknown to the assailant before the day of the occurrence. Fortunately, there was a considerable outcry over the Stanford case.

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Beyond the tragic consequences of sexual assault, one wonders about the sentencing. It is clear that women have carried the burden of rape due to silence and shame, and in almost all rape cases it is only their word against the assailant as to the engagement in a sexual encounter. Mary-Hunter Morris’s research of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania provides two possible perspectives among many as to why the women in each case were the victims, while their attackers seem to receive the protection of the court. In an experiment conducted by her and two associates, volunteers were told a fabricated story about a hospital administrator who had filed a false Medicare claim. Some were told that the administrator’s name was Jack Moranti while others were told that the administrator’s name was Jane Moranti. All the other details of the alleged fraud were exactly the same. The volunteers were asked to “recommend a jail sentence” for this hospital administrator. The resulting verdict was 80 days for Jack and 130 days for Jane—almost two months’ difference.

McDonnell and her companions then analyzed 500 cases that came before the American Bar Association (A.B.A.) from 33 states regarding identical violations of ethical codes (e.g. sleeping with a client, the pooling of moneys held by the attorney for various clients, and so forth) set forth by the A.B.A. The recommended punishments varied between admonishment, suspension, and disbarment. McDonnell discovered that women had a 35% chance of being disbarred versus men who received disbarment in 17% of identical cases; in other words, women faced disbarment likelihood 106% higher than men. Positive stereotypes often produce unintended consequences and women may be punished more severely than men for the same offence.

Are we making progress by elevating the status of women? Does the fact that for the first time in history a woman has become the nominee for president of the United States mark progress? Regarding legal parity with men, it seems that it hasn’t.

Sincerely yours,

Rick Stecker,

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