Lowell attorney and Wheaton grad receives honorary degree from the college

The struggle for gender equality in the workplace is not over and today's college students graduates must carry the fight forward, said noted attorney Kathleen O'Donnell, who received an honorary degree during the college's 172nd Commencement on Saturday, May 19, 2007.

"I'm here today to issue you a challenge," said O'Donnell, who graduated from Wheaton in 1977. "My generation cracked the glass ceiling; you must break through it and eliminate it. I urge you and hope that when you come back for your 30th reunion, we will all have the equality for which we have been striving for the past 25 years."

The former president of the Massachusetts Bar Association cited a recent study that showed women held only 13 percent of the equity partner positions in Boston's major law firms, despite 30 years in which women entered the legal profession in numbers equal to or greater than men.

"That's an alarming statistic and one that the MIT Workplace Center has said is the same for women in other professions," she said, noting that Boston's four medical schools are all headed by men, as are most of those organizations' departments and their full professors. "At this point, it is not a pipeline issue."

The problem, she said, lies in outdated workplace expectations that disadvantage women. "That is the challenge for your generation: To get rid of the opaque discrimination that still exists. Choices are great, options are wonderful, but equality is what we all must strive for."

O'Donnell is a civil attorney with the Albert J. Marcott Law Firm of Lowell, Mass. She was named one of the 12 most influential attorneys in Massachusetts by the National Law Journal and in 1992 she received the Lawyer of the Year Award from the Greater Lowell Bar Association. The first woman president of the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys, O'Donnell is also past president of the Massachusetts Bar Association.

"I'm humbled to receive this award from an institution that has meant so much to me in my life and in my career," O'Donnell told the 370 members of the Class of 2007 after receiving her honor.

"I wish the graduates of 2007 well. You have been well prepared; your Wheaton education will take you far. I hope the best days of your past are the worst days of your future."

Also receiving honorary degrees were Deborah Bial, president and founder of the Posse Foundation, and Bob Herbert, op-ed columnist for The New York Times. Freeman Hrabowski III, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), and a leading advocate for increasing the number of high-achieving minority students in science and engineering, gave the Commencement address.