Women now make up nearly 50 percent of law school graduates and 42 percent of associates in private firms, but still only 16 percent of partners, so psychologist Joanie B. Connell, Ph.D., and her colleagues at Alliant International University examined a possible reason for the gap: that women in this traditionally male profession have to expend additional "emotional labor" because they have to appear to be like men. Emotional labor is a measure of the effort one expends trying to show feelings that are expected but which don't come naturally, and it is associated in the workplace with stress, burnout, and poor performance.

For the study, 123 lawyers from across the United States filled out questionnaires measuring emotional labor and masculinity and femininity. It turned out that both genders reported the same amount of emotional labor when dealing with people who aren't lawyers (clients, juries, etc.), but when it came to dealing with other lawyers, women exerted significantly more emotional labor than men did. Since the study's subjects spend 65 percent of their work time dealing with other lawyers, women appear to be spending the majority of their days sentenced to the emotional equivalent of hard labor.

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