April 22, 2008
Conference speakers: women leaders are many and visible, but progress is stalling
AU’s Karen O’Connor, left, director of the Women and Politics Institute, welcomed ambassadors Inonge Mbikusita-Lewanika of Zambia, Eva Nowotny of Austria, and Elena Poptodorova of Bulgaria to the institute’s 2008 conference. The ambassadors spoke on women’s global leadership. (Photo by Anne Doyle)
After years of progress, women’s ascent into political leadership has stalled, and some women at the highest levels are concerned that they haven’t effectively mentored the next generation.
Those were among the findings discussed at the 2008 Women and Political Leadership Conference, “Engendering Theories of Difference and Commonality: Women and Political Leadership in an Era of Identity Politics.”
Organized by the School of Public Affairs’ Women and Politics Institute, the forum drew scholars from across the country and as far away as New Zealand to discuss how differences as well as commonalities impact political behavior and women’s experiences in leadership.
Topics ranged from the increased visibility of women leaders in foreign policy, to the characteristics of women who succeed in party politics, to the changes in how girls view themselves as potential leaders.
Although 69 percent of girls self-identify as “leaders,” this percentage drops sharply as they move into adolescence, according to research by Meredith Reid Sarkees of AU’s Women and Politics Institute. While young girls are just as likely as boys to describe themselves as leaders, the change in self-definition may reflect the tendency of girls to define themselves in terms of relationships.
Concern with relationships was evident whether or not girls perceived themselves as future leaders. Girls who pulled back from viewing themselves as leaders expressed concerns about ridicule. Those who persisted characterized leadership positively, but still in relational terms, as a way to help others.
Today’s young girls are living in a world where the number of women in the halls of power has increased significantly over the past 30 years. When white men say they’ve been losing power, it’s true, said Georgia Duerst-Lahti of Beloit College. However, she added, they’ve been losing mostly to white women. Racially and ethnically, the picture is more complex.
Change in power also varies across institutional lines. Organizations have social meaning, and their histories have been shaped by past incumbents, she noted. The Department of Defense has a different history of leadership than departments that provide social services. “We have gendered leadership,” she said.
Sarkees noted in another research paper that women in the State Department hold around 49 percent of the leadership positions, while the percentage at the Department of Defense is almost 37 percent.
Over the past 30 years, the Government Service (GS) levels of women have risen. While this is due partly to a decrease in clerical positions, executive leadership is also increasing as opportunities for women expand both as government employees and political appointees. The main contributing factors, she said, have been changes in organizational climates, presidential leadership and appointments, and public acceptance of women as leaders.
Yet surveys of women leaders show they tend to be unmarried and not have children. This is particularly true in foreign policy, because of the demands of travel, she said in her discussion, “No Longer Just Top Hats and Monocles: Women as Foreign Policy Decision-makers.”
Women have risen to prime minister twice in New Zealand. Jennifer Curtin of the University of Auckland, New Zealand, studied the careers of women political leaders in New Zealand and Australia to understand the variables that go beyond personal attributes.
In practice, successful women in politics have several things in common. Most became active in politics early, before the age of 40. They’ve also been “generalists” who have strengths in multiple issues and have avoided being tagged as narrowly focused on women’s and children’s issues. It’s also the case, she said, that “reconciling motherhood and politics remains fraught.”
As women leaders across the globe rise in visibility while grappling with the challenges of climbing to leadership, progress has flattened out in the last decade in the United States, Sarkees said. Women’s representation in the workforce was on the increase for many years, but more recently has begun to decline. “What we’re seeing is a stall in women’s leadership,” she said.
There is also concern about lack of encouragement for the next generation, a concern found in arenas as diverse as the Department of Defense and state legislatures.
“We have not encouraged the next generation,” she said. “It’s not enough to put a few examples out there.” What is needed, she said, is a type of “transformational leadership” in which women in politics become committed not only to their own careers, but to impacting the next generation.
