Rosemary Gousman Offers Insight On Gender Equality

Rosemary Gousman was featured in an Law360 article entitled “Gender Equality A No-Brainer For Employment Firms.”

On her first day as an associate at a general practice firm, Rosemary Gousman, fresh out of Rutgers University School of Law’s class of 1980, received a word of wisdom from the firm’s only female partner on her way to meet the head of the labor practice, who had selected Rosemary out of the crop of new attorneys to work on his team.

“As we were going to meet him, she said, ‘If I had to do it all over again, I would become a labor attorney,'” Rosemary recalled. "She said it's intellectually stimulating and a way better opportunity for a woman.”

While men still dominated leadership positions in the growing labor and employment law industry when Rosemary began practicing, it was already a promising place for young female attorneys to work, offering opportunities for advancement and merit-based work environments that they couldn’t find in other corporate firms, according to the article.

When Rosemary graduated law school in 1980, she said the uptick in individual harassment cases proved to be a catalyst for women entering the field.

“There were sexual harassment and gender discrimination cases, and at that time, a lot of employers thought it would be important to have a woman defending them,” she said. “Gender was seen as a positive.”

Click here to read the full article.