Why we need more women leaders
By many accounts, it would seem women have come a long way in this world. Maybe you lived the 1960s, or maybe, like me, you can only watch those years on Sunday nights with the TV show “Mad Men,” which follows the lives of ad execs in 1960s Manhattan. Either way, you know things have changed.
Few in the business world will say out loud that women are not capable. In my mother’s generation, women were instructed that they had three options: teacher, nurse, housewife. Now, there is virtually no field in which a woman does not participate.
Here in Fayette County, even, female politicians have taken leadership roles at even greater rates than other areas of our state. According to an editorial in the Herald-Standard last Sunday, women represent two legislative districts, in Fayette and Green counties, and, after the nomination of three women for countywide positions in May, we have nearly reached a 50/50 gender split in county political offices.
On the national level, Hillary Clinton is as powerful a political figure as anyone, and by 2016, I predict, her power will have grown.
And yet.
Few would dispute that it remains a man’s world. The stats are disheartening: out of 190 heads-of-state in the world, only nine are women. Women in high-level corporate positions top out at 15 percent — the same as in 2002. Women participate in most fields, but in many of them, the female workforce is just a small slice of the pie.
And these women face unique battles every day, like balancing work and childcare, struggling to be heard in a male-dominated environment, where they may not even realize their own biases, and dealing with being disliked by their colleagues — studies show that successful, powerful men are both respected and well-liked, while successful, powerful women are respected but deemed cold and unpleasant.
And when it comes to our military and defense, men obviously run the show. Politicians are always careful to say “our men and women in the military,” but test yourself: when someone says “soldier” or “general,” what do you picture? From a recent hearing about the very real problem of sexual assault in the military, we get the standard photo of the room’s layout: a long row of men at a mahogany table, 11 of them, and just one woman. It was a similar picture during the debate about whether religious organizations that provide health insurance should be required to cover birth control: a panel of (white) men, deciding on issues that will never affect them. Both genders recognize how wrong this is, but nothing changes.
Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg wrote a flash-bang book called “Lean In” about women’s stumbling blocks to success, which instructs women to take risks, be bold and don’t huddle in the corner. The world is ready, she seemed to suggest, for women to take their rightful place, but women hold women back.
She’s not wrong. I know from being an editor that fewer women writers submit their work for publication. Fewer women vie for top positions. A lot of women want nothing to do with combat. But it’s a complicated question: are women less likely to “go big” because they understand that these worlds are not meant for them in the first place, or because they have been socialized to step back and not negotiate for what they want, or because they are more or less pre-disposed to find these worlds distasteful?
I know, as an introvert, I’d be miserable as a CEO. Not to mention bad at it. And then I consider the worldwide havoc caused by gigantic, multinational corporations and military action. Death, poverty, environmental ruin. Is it a success if women start playing a larger role in that system?
Which leads to another question: when there are flaws in a system, is the best course of action to wash your hands of it, or get or stay involved and hope to change the system from within?
Maybe staying in and getting involved is the answer. Maybe women could revolutionize the way we see corporate America and military defense, because their framework for seeing the world is different. Not because of their gender, but because of the way their gender is treated.
In male-dominated worlds, women are hurt. Military sexual assault is rampant. Women who work in high-powered offices have to work harder to be noticed, for their ideas to be taken seriously. Maybe the only way to change that is to add more women to the mix.
Jessica Vozel is a resident of Perryopolis.