Situation Report

COURTS. There is not, and never has been, a woman Justice on the Supreme Court. Only one of the nine Justices, Thurgood Marshall, has a woman as his clerk (she is Barbara Underwood, the fourth woman to hold such a post). Among the 97 federal appeals court judges, California's Shirley Hufstedler is the only woman All but four of the 402 federal district court judges are men Of the total of about 10,000 judges in all courts throughout the U.S., only some 200 are women.

GOVERNMENT. The figures are much the same for female attorneys in other areas of government. No federal agency has ever had a woman as general counsel, and no state has a woman as attorney general. The 93 district attorneys in the federal service are all men.

TRAINING. This situation may change as more women go to law school. The 8,680 women studying law in 1971 constituted 9.3% of the total number of law students--an increase from 3.6% in 1960. Contrary to the popular stereotype, one study of women law graduates over a period of 17 years showed that 84% remained in the profession, more than half of them in private practice. On the other hand, less than 12% of them were making more than $20,000 as compared to 50% of the men.

All in all, the U.S. has about 9,000 women lawyers up a mere 1% since 1948--representing 2.8% of the total of 325,000. This hardly compares with such foreign countries as West Germany, where even a decade ago 33% of the lawyers were women, or Russia, where the figure was 36%. Nor have women yet reached positions of leadership in their professional organizations. The American Bar Association has never had a woman as president, and there are no women on the A.B.A. board of governors.

LAW ENFORCEMENT. In this area women are more the enforced against than the enforcers. The first five female agents for the Secret Service are only now in training, and there are no plans for any female FBI agent, though two young women have brought action to achieve that distinction. Across the country, women make up an estimated 1.5% of the police forces, mainly in low-ranking positions. New York's Gertrude Schimmel, on becoming the city's first woman police captain last summer (she has since been promoted to deputy inspector), was asked if she ever expected to see woman appointed police commissioner. She answered: "Only by the first woman mayor."

CRIME Crime by females is increasing. In 1970 rates of robbery (up 187.9% over 1960), burglary (133.8%) and auto theft (133%) are all going up faster among women than among men. In absolute terms, women still commit far fewer serious crimes than do men (215,614 arrests of women to 1,058,169 for men in 1970), and that makes the rate of increase more striking The percentage of females in federal and state prisons is therefore still small (3 to 4%), but three of the notables on the FBI's list of twelve "most-wanted" fugitives are women.

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