HO CHI MINH UNIVERSITY OF LAW

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THE EXTRA-CURRICULUM HARVEST REPORT: THE FILM SHOWCASE

“BALANCING THE SCALES”

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TEAM MEMBERS’ INFORMATIONS

Class of Advanced programs 42-B
1. Pham Tran Bao Khanh - 1753801015083
2. Pham Thanh Truc - 1753801015261
3. Nguyen Quang Tien Yen - 1753801015278
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Question 1 (2.5p): Why did the producer decide to make the film? What is the implied
message of “Balancing the Scales” as the title of the film? Briefly introduce the process
to form the film.
Sharon decided to film "Balancing the Scales" at the time she gave birth to her first daughter
to learn about her daughter's career opportunities in the future as at her time, opportunity of
work was low. Big law firms refuse to hire women graduating from law schools and during
her 40 years working as a lawyer, she was subject to some of the discrimination mentioned
in the film.

Balancing the Scales’ implied message were about the two scales that women have to face
in their life: one is the balance with men in employment dating back to the time women was
not allowed to go to law school and refused by big law firms to up to now when the
discrimination towards women in job has evolved to be subtle and sophisticated. And the
remaining scale is the balance between their career and family with the fact that society takes
women as the main child’s rearing role for granted.

And the message that the director, Mrs. Sharon wants to send is: "Women should be raised
to higher positions and should be judged on talent and knowledge not on the old biases or
prejudices. Women should be able to choose how to balance work and career and that the
culture should not force women into giving up their career to take care of their family.”

Now let me guide you to go briefly through the film-making process:

The documentary film “Balancing the Scales” was made by a female director, Sharon Rowen
(originally a lawyer in the US) from 1994 to 2014, and was finally completed in 2016.

The film is fifty-seven minutes long, recording the insights of the insiders including many
lawyers, judges ... of five generations, in the form of interviews of memorable stories about
challenges and discrimination that they had to go through.

During the 20 years of film-making, perhaps what Sharon has the most is the enthusiasm,
patience, persistence, to find out the answers to women equality’s situation and how women
can have their balancing scales in both career and family.

At the beginning of the idea of filmmaking, Sharon Rowen followed the "hall of fame"
direction. In other words, her film was intended to tell the stories of successful women in the
legal profession as gender inequality has been viewed as no longer available.

However, by 2009, she realized that gender discrimination was still present and continuing
as what had happened between the 50s and 90s. Nowadays, despite the efforts of the law
towards gender equality, statistics show that the situation is still not improved a lot compared
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to the previous time. So she turned the film making purpose which is to work on the
challenges and prejudices women have to face, the invisible barriers that society imposes on
them to prevent them from achieving achievements and holding high positions.
She also shared that: The lucky thing in the filmmaking process is that the female lawyers,
judges, etc., she came to interview, had been very enthusiastic to cooperate with her. They
showed us an honest and extremely realistic perspective on the injustices from the gender
discrimination that they themselves experienced during their time in the law industry.

Question 2 (2.5p): How was the development of gender equality in legal education and
legal professional careers in the US accordingly?

Back in the 50s, women did not have the right to study law. Harvard University did not
accept applications from female students. After the situation of gender equality had been
improved, some women have attended law school. However, they faced many discrimination
difficulties that we can see throughout the film. Women going to school is regarded to find
a husband. In the class, teachers will never call female students. They were seen an invisible
person throughout the school year. Even if their name were called, women will be seen as
representing their gender to answer, which put a great stress on them. Another example is
related to Harvard law school. At that time, there were two buildings in Harvard, but only
one did have a female bathroom. Mrs. Ruth Bader Ginsburg1 jokingly said: "The Harvard
test is very stressful and if you are taking a test and you want to go to bathroom, you then
have to make a mad dash to the next building.”

In the working place, women’ voices do not have weigh or merits and they are only assigned
misdemeanor tasks or those lack of prestige rather than tasks equivalent to their competency.
Or at court, women must follow dress code. They have to dress like men to look more
dignified.

Ms. Oni A. Holley2 said that when she heard the first instance case, the courtroom was very
special. People stood around the courtroom like ants, although this case is not so special that
people have to care to that extent.

Besides, women working in the same position were always paid much lower than men were.
Additionally, women are socially imposed responsibilities as primary family care-taker. This
makes them have two jobs while men have only one.

By 1960s, gender inequality in society seems to have improved. Men and women are seen
to be treat equally. But in fact, the discrimination only moved from overt state to subtle state,
from the rules of wearing white gloves to court in the 60s to assertiveness training in 2015.

1
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, The Associate Justice of U.S Supreme Court
2
Partner Molden & Holley CEO
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To the current day, injustice has diminished, women have had a better position in every
working fields and particularly in the law industry. However, they face another challenge.
They are labeled by the society as the main family care-taker. They have two jobs: the wife-
mother jobs and their careers. Society does not encourage men to step back to help their wife
in the child’ rearing role. But this inequality can be improved if women have an
accommodating spouse, who will consider his wife's career as important as his and deal
together with his wife the housework as two associates.

Question 3: What is the detail or story of the person in the film that you find interesting
or/and motivating or/and surprising the most? What is your private opinion towards
that issue?
The later part of the film3 of Sharon4’s women interviewee giving opinions whether they
will have family and children or not is what I find most interesting. I agree with the idea that:
Women cannot be a perfect mom and still be wholeheartedly devoted to their career. It is
impossible.

I strongly believe that women cannot both accomplish the mother’s goal perfectly and have
a glorious career at the same time. If women choose to work for large law firms and want to
become the firm’s partners, they have to spend a lot of time working, to be wholeheartedly
with their work and have to bear a great deal of pressure. How could they spare enough time
to be true parent to share with their kid’s life? Woman is just a human-being, not a machine.
She also needs to take care of herself too. It is true that if people have too many goals to
accomplish, it is difficult for them to achieve one hundred percentage of all the goals. That
is also my motto: focusing on one thing to the best of your ability. If you have two much
goals, you end up in having neither fully- accomplished goal and feeling exhausted. If
women choose to spend more time for their children, to be closer to their children, they must
sacrifice their careers. Their career can still grow but only to a certain extent. Higher rank in
job or promotion means less time for children, family and more stress. There is nothing
called “balance” at first. If you enjoy working and love what you are doing, you will not
define the line between working and person life because working has ingrained in your life.
You live with it. But it is undeniable fact that much as you love and enjoy your career, there
are times when you are extremely stressed. And then instead of having a break from work to
recharge yourself, you then have to take care of family and children affairs.

Throughout the film, there are many stories to prove my above idea. According to Sharon's
survey of women working in law spanning for five generations, they decided not to have
children. The women interviewed said that women were forced to make choices: one was to
focus having children and less time working, the other was not having children or having a

3
Balancing the scales
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Lawyer, Director of Balancing the Scales
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supportive spouse who also regards his wife profession as important as his. Only then can
women still be able to focus on their career.

Mrs. Ellen Tobin5 had married and planned to have children but it is a huge challenge to her
particularly and to any women in any working environment. She said: “I am not sure how
it’s all going to play out. In any working fields, particularly in law fields, where law firms
give women the demanding schedule.”

She continued saying that: “It is how much time we put in our work that we’re evaluated.
Your standing in law firm can really suffer because you’re seen as not being willing to out
in the time that required for the case or you may be seen insufficiently committed.”

Ms. Nancy E. Delaney6 showed her agreement towards women choosing to stay in their
career as much as they can while still having children and she said: “If they want it, they’re
going to do it” but she also had to admit that: “Women cannot be at the same time a perfect
mom, attend every event of her children while still succeed greatly in their career. There is
not enough time for them to do. They have to make choice.”

Mrs. Dorothy7 decided not to have children because she chose her career, and she admitted
that she could not do both jobs: a mom and a successful women in her profession.

And in the case of Scandinavian, which is regarded as a progressive country in women

equality, the answer is the same. One interviewee said: “To be considered a law partner,
women have to work about 60 or 70 hours a week. If 60 hours, why have a family”. And
even with the “part-time” job solution for women so that they can both perform at work and
at home, it is not possible when considered to country’s profit aspect.

In my opinion, Sharon’s story is also a demonstration. Sharon had kid. But the fact was,
Sharon and her husband were both in the same working fields so they could understand each
other about the pressures and problems about women inequality in the law profession. And
they after even decided to open their own law firm and were very supportive towards each
other in both career and family life. Every element needs to be counted when talking about
how successful Sharon is in both her career and family, but yet I find Sharon lucky to have
a supportive spouse in both career and family. Not every women can get that luck.
Mrs. Donnie E. Eskenazi8, gave an example of the time she had just given birth and how her
clients favored her so that she still can attend the court. But as Sharon shared, this was not
an impossible and impractical choice for most women and personally, I think she was right.

5
Ellen Tobin, Associate attorney of Curtis Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle, LLP.
6
Nancy E. Delaney, Associate attorney of Curtis Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle, LLP.
7
Dorothy, Judge of Georgia Court of Appeal
8
Donnie E. Eskenazi8, Partner of Greenberg Glusker.
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Mrs. Ruth Bader Ginsburg9 said: “Yes you can have balance, it is not easy but all you need
is to have an accommodating spouse. If your spouse do not sympathize for what’re you doing
and see your job as important as his, you would have two jobs.
It is true that unless you have a supportive and understanding husband, you cannot bear in a
long run, in a society when women are automatically labeled to be the main person taking
care of home affairs and kids. And yet, there has not been much man step back to bear the
children-rearing role. If any women make choice to still have kids and still pursue for higher
career, they have to come to the acceptance of the reality they are going to face in the future:
the overload of work, the burden of being a mom and having a glorious career: “ Everybody’s
pulling you in every direction” said Mrs. Donnie. I actually admire these women and as
Sharon said: “They are superwomen”

The question is: “How can women still have family/children and still accomplish their career
goal” is not hard to answer. It is the time that society has to change the way they view
women’s role. The culture should not take the fact of women giving up her career to take
care of family for granted any longer. The fact of male taking a back seat and do child’s
rearing role should be seen as normal. And it is important that an accommodating spouse
plays significantly in deciding whether women can develop their career.

I can see how the society evaluates greatly mother’s role in a Vietnamese family. When my
mother got pregnant with my younger brother, my father prevented her from going to big
city for higher education: to study to become a doctor and also I remembered, when I was in
grade one, my mother had to do all the housework while having her main job at the hospital
and working some extra hours at home even my father was not as busy with his career as not
be able to help her. The stereotype of woman step back taking care of family has been
ingrained deeply in Vietnamese’s society up till now.
I want to restate again that women cannot be a perfect mom and still be wholeheartedly
devoted to their career. Only by having an accommodating spouse who is willing to help and
sacrifice for his wife, to see his wife career as important as his that women will be able to
have kids and career alongside.

Question 4 (2.5p): Balancing the Scales is a powerful film; it is a portrait of the

challenges facing women in the legal profession not only in the US but also a global
issue. To what extend, do you agree or disagree with this opinion and raise your view
points.

The film is such a powerful source of inspiration creating a typical image of the struggle and
challenges for women in public legal affairs, not only in the US but all over the world.

Throughout the film, the interviews took place in turn and from then on, the stories of gender
discrimination were painted more and more boldly. Starting from public sex discrimination

9
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, The Associate Justice of U.S Supreme Court
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in previous generations, when women’s practicing law was considered a strange and
impossible thing, they still try to pursue their passion. It is worth mentioning here that, when
observing the film, we realize that sex discrimination not only happens to women when
compared to men in legal profession but also to women themselves. At the beginning of the
film, when the two twins lawyer10 were invited to a reality show, people did not think they
are lawyers and when the answer was announced, the female guest reacted very
disrespectfully to them with one eyebrow raised.
Each story shared through the film make a piece of gender discrimination in law. The efforts
and sacrifices of the previous women was to regain justice not for themselves but for the
later female generations because the distinction was too big at their time. They fought for
the next generation to receive the fairness that they should have had. Starting from scratch,
from being told to study at Harvard is to earn a husband till the time of graduation, when a
series of law firm did not accept female employees and the exploitation of women labor with
unequal pay, the wave of women struggle has intensified and brought about their competence
recognition, and a more balanced treatment. However, the challenge that they face does not
only limit to fair treatment at work, but to the balance between career and family when
society had so long recognized the women’s main child rearing and family caring role. In
other words, women have two jobs. Inevitably, they must continue to fight for balanced
treatment, to affirm to society that the image of women is not associated with family care
work and retreat to the kitchen but all members in families must share together, especially
their partners. And then after that, they succeeded! As Mrs. Sharon Rowen confided after
the movie, she succeeded and overcame all the difficulties with the support from her spouse
as both a husband and a colleague. After all, it was hard to change one's mind, but they had
fought to change the thinking and prejudice of a society! Yet it is not easy to maintain the
scale balanced. Throughout the film, we witnessed many interviewed women quit their jobs
so as to take care of their children or to look for light jobs or the closer office to home. For
example, Mrs. Ellen Tobin, Associate attorney of Curtis Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle, LLP
had baby and left the firm to move a smaller firm closer to her home.

We, as female law students find ourselves shocking and touching when women not only US
but all over the world are gradually recognized their position in the law profession. The wave
of struggles for women has become bigger than ever before. We have a female judge of
color, we have a spreading struggle to Asian countries, particularly Vietnam - a country that
has greatly influenced the ashes of prejudice against women from feudal times.

Women’s position in every profession has been greatly changed and 2016 is also the year to
mark a milestone when the head of the National Assembly Standing Committee - the
standing body of the National Assembly is a woman - Mrs. Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan.
According to statistics in 2019, Vietnam currently has the second highest percentage of
women and business leaders in Asia with 36%, surpassing Singapore with 33.04%, South

10
Ruth & Ruby Crawford, Twin Attorneys
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Korea with 29, 89% and Japan with 15.43%11. It can be seen that women is increasingly
determined to cope with the challenges they face to the best of their ability. The effect of the
struggle for justice has spread positively across the globe, not only in the US and we, after
the film, have been significantly inspired, motivated and become stronger to continue prove
our best capacity and position in every fields generally and in legal profession particularly,
even though there are still inadequacies in the way society viewing women’s role and
women’s difficulties in the balance between career and family,
We, as the law students, feel appreciated for all things women in previous generations for
their persistency, efforts in exchange of great values for the next generation- our generation.
We feel thankful for Mrs. Sharon Rowen for her inspiring and great film .We will be a bit
more courageous in the future and strives for our best version in our coming career.

11
VNExpress, Vietnam has the second highest proportion of female leaders in Asia,
https://vnexpress.net/kinh-doanh/viet-nam-co-ty-le-nu-lanh-dao-cap-cao-dung-thu-hai-chau-a-
3891271.html