According to the most recent data from the American Bar Association, women outnumbered men in law school classrooms across the country for the eighth year in a row in 2023.
At the outset of the 20th century, women comprised less than five percent of all law students. However, a gradual but significant shift commenced in the 1960s, reaching a milestone in 2016 when the number of female law students exceeded that of their male counterparts for the first time. Since then, the gender gap has grown 13.4 percentage points.
According to the data, 56.25 percent of law students are women, compared to 42.85 who are men. Additionally, 0.54 percent of students “prefer not to report” their gender and 0.36 percent identify with “another gender.”
Notably, 86.29 percent of law schools report having more female than male students. Moreover, 18 of the top 20 law schools ranked by U.S. News & World Report have higher female than male student enrollment. To put this in perspective, in 2016 — the first year female enrollment surpassed male in law schools — only four of these top 20 institutions had more female than male law students.
While the increased presence of women in law schools should be acknowledged and celebrated, this trend highlights two other developments that need further attention.
Firstly, women’s progress in legal education and some sectors doesn’t yet translate to equivalent advancements in leadership roles within private practice.
Women comprise almost 40 percent of practicing lawyers, compared to just 31 percent in 2010. Female federal judges have increased significantly since 1980, when there were only 46 federal judges. Today, about one-third of all federal judges are women, and that number is trending upward. Women are faring even better in state Supreme Courts, where they make up 41 percent of all high-court justices.
More women than ever are leading U.S. law schools. In 2000, only 10 percent of law school deans were women. Today, 43 percent of all law school deans are women, according to Rosenblatt’s Deans Database.
Moreover, women now constitute 42.8 percent of law school faculty members, a significant increase from the 1980s when they made up only 20 percent.
However, there is a glaring absence of women — particularly women of color — in leadership positions. Concerning law firms, women make up only 26.65 percent of partners and only 22.6 percent of equity partners, according to the National Association of Women Lawyers most recent report on diversity in U.S. law firms.
The second development that merits attention is that, as women increasingly dominate law school classrooms, there is a corresponding and dramatic decline in male enrollment.
The number of men in law schools has declined every year for the past 13 years—from 78,516 male enrollees in 2010 to 50,097 male enrollees in 2023.
Examining the origins of the contemporary educational disparity may be beneficial to gain insight into the notable decrease in male law students. Reports indicate that in the U.S., girls are more likely to be prepared for school than boys by a margin of 14 percent at the age of four. In high school, the top tenth percentile predominantly consists of female students, while male students largely occupy the lower tenth percentile.
Currently, the enrollment ratio in U.S. colleges and universities favors women, with a ratio of six women to every four men. This pattern isn’t recent; since the mid-1980s, women have consistently outpaced men in earning bachelor’s degrees.
Reflecting on historical data, Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institution noted that in 1970, men formed 57 percent of the student population in higher education. Two years later, Congress passed Title IX with the goal of eliminating sex-based discrimination in federally funded educational institutions. Today, the gender gap is much wider — albeit in the opposite direction. This raises a difficult question: How, if at all, should we address this reversed gender disparity?
Ian Pisarcik graduated from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 2009. He has worked for the Oregon State Bar and practiced as a personal injury and insurance defense attorney in Spokane, Washington. Currently, he serves as the executive editor for Enjuris.com, a website dedicated to providing reliable legal information to injury victims, law students, and others.
