Someone who says that he or she is a Social Security Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) has tried to figure out the gender breakdown of Social Security's ALJ corps based only upon their names. From the ALJ Discussion Forum:
I am sure that Social Security knows the exact breakdown but I do not recall it ever being released.
| January 2010 Reporting | Total | % of Total |
| male name | 947 | 71% |
| female name | 312 | 23% |
| initials only used | 39 | 3% |
| unisex (shortened or epicene) name | 38 | 3% |
| total alj unique names | 1,336 | 100% |
I am sure that Social Security knows the exact breakdown but I do not recall it ever being released.
7 comments:
That's because it doesn't matter. Just as any number of other things don't matter--like age, religion, race, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, etc, etc.
OPM should have the statistics, but probably only for non-public bean-counting.
It does matter,especially in a country that has a history owning black people,genocide against native americans,and mistreatment of women. But if you were a white male during those times,you mostly likely was in a better position.
I hope ssa/opm is smart enough to know that.
Some of the information came from ALJ's asking judges in other regions for the information. Although I am now retired I did get an e-mail asking me to identify several Region 1 ALJ's gender.
The reality is that there are still too few women and minority judges. I was the 12th woman ALJ appointed and that was in 1981. My class had three women and one was an African-American. At that time there were about 1200 ALJ's in Social Security.
Given the fact that law schools are now about 50% women SSA is far behind the mainstream. And SSA is very far behind in the appointment of minority judges (African-American, Latino/Latina, and Asian as well as Native American).
OPM does indeed have the stats, and if anyone cared to file an FOIA request I imagine it would be released.
To curtail speculation:
1. The analysis was not completed or reported by an ALJ or anybody with any insider knowledge, SSA employment, or otherwise
2. As clearly stated in the original discussion board post, the source is the public use files “ALJ Disposition Data” at http://www.ssa.gov/appeals/DataSets/03_ALJ_Disp.html. Suitable allowance has been made for uncertainty of names, duplication, and epicene names. The results are probably 95% accurate.
3. The purpose of my analysis was presentation of (apparent) facts and not inflamation
I think these numbers are more fairly attributed to the structural discrimination that has been traditionally prevalent in the legal profession.
Lately, legal bloggers have been increasing the general awareness of structural discrimination in the profession. Recent discussions have touched on how socioeconomic status influences performance on the LSAT, and who can actually access "partner" status in law firms.
As the old vanguard retires, the face of the ALJ corps should change significantly.
The problem is not really the distribution of lawyers by sex, or even qualified lawyers by sex. The problem flows directly from the veterans' preference. You can prefer veterans, or you can recruit more women, but you can't successfully come close to equalizing the number of men and women in the ALJ corps as long as women remain a tiny fraction of the military.
Frankly, I think it is entirely reasonable to reward vets for their service, but then I'm not a woman.
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