Gender Equality Committee
Mission:
This committee investigates issues of gender discrimination and equality in the legal profession and in the legal system. The committee may undertake projects as deemed necessary or appropriate to ensure fair treatment and equality of all members of the legal profession and all participants in the legal system. The focus for this committee includes follow-up to the findings of the latest NHBA Gender Equality Survey, including development of a proposed voluntary certification process of non-discriminatory, family-friendly employment policies for legal employers to be presented to the NHBA Board of Governors.
Successful Negotiations Workshop
The New Hampshire Bar Association Gender Equality Committee and New Lawyers Committee partnered with the New Hampshire Women’s Bar Association to put on a Negotiations workshop. Law students and new lawyers had the opportunity to watch a new hire and lateral/partner level interview and then engage in discussions about how to address some issues that come up during interviews. In addition, the workshop included a panel discussion on the dos and don’ts of negotiating and interviewing, and the panelists also answered questions from the attendees. Thank you to the attorneys with Upton & Hatfield, Pastori Krans, Bernstein Shur, Manning & Zimmerman, Murphy Legal, and McLane Middleton for providing invaluable insight to the future of the New Hampshire Bar.
Gender Equality Committee Holds “Ask Me Anything” Event with UNH Law Students
On Tuesday, November 10, NHBA’s Gender Equality Committee partnered with the Women’s Student Law Association to host an “Ask Me Anything” panel discussion. In the world of COVID, the GEC wanted to give law students an opportunity to network and ask attorney’s truly anything. Law students took the opportunity to ask questions about what to take advantage of while in law school, whether a change in field is possible, and what steps to jumpstart and further their career as practitioner in New Hampshire. The panelists each provided such a unique perspective and invaluable advice.
Philip S. Hollman Award for Gender Equality
The Hollman Award recipient is someone who is dedicated to promoting respect and fair treatment toward all members of the judicial system. This person acts as a leader, educator, and role model on such issues. Nancy Richards-Stower has been an employee rights advocate for 49 years and a political activist for Democrats even longer. In 1969, she graduated from high school in Yarmouth, Maine, when the Vietnam war was raging, so she headed to DC and George Washington University to help organize demonstrations against the war, for equal rights, and for the first Earth Day.
In 1973, Franklin Pierce Law Center was founded by Dr. Robert H. Rines and began taking applications for "the different law school." So, three days after she and Richard Stower married, Nancy joined seven other "pioneer women" and 107 men in the school’s first class, which was located in a renovated bull farm on a mountaintop in Concord.
After stints in Washington, DC on Capitol Hill and with a civil rights litigation firm, Nancy returned to New Hampshire, where she was appointed to the NH Commission for Human Rights. Meanwhile, she worked for and with her mentor, Dr. Rines, representing scientists whose inventions were threatened by powerful corporations and helping Rines build and run New Hampshire's first commercial fish farm. When she became pregnant in 1980, Rines built her a nursery in their Concord office, welcoming baby Jonathan into the fold.
In 1988, Nancy opened her solo employee rights law firm in Merrimack, NH. She closed it during COVID, while continuing her practice remotely from Maine.
Active in the National Employment Lawyers Association (NELA), she founded the NH Chapter in 1993. In 2003, she was the first NH woman inducted into the College of Labor & Employment Lawyers, eventually quitting the College when it refused to lower dues for solo practitioners. In 2015, she received the Granite State Advocate Award from the NH Association of Justice. A member of the New Hampshire and Massachusetts bars, Nancy presented on discrimination law at each of the first 22 years of the NHBA's Annual Employment Law Updates CLE. Along the way, she invented an online litigation settlement tool, TrytoSettle.com®.
View All Philip S. Hollman Award Winners
Gender Equality Surveys
Families First Coronavirus Response Act: Employee Paid Leave Rights
The Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA or Act) requires certain employers to provide employees with paid sick leave or expanded family and medical leave for specified reasons related to COVID-19. The Department of Labor’s (Department) Wage and Hour Division (WHD) administers and enforces the new law’s paid leave requirements. These provisions will apply from the effective date through December 31, 2020.
