Key Research Issues in Women's Leadership

Location: Graduate Center at the City University of New York

Event Date: June 7, 2005

Speakers: Ella Bell, Nan Langowitz, Laura Liswood, Eleanor Smeal

Moderator: Mary Hartman

Quotes

“Research is political.” – Ella Bell

“We have to get past the visual about what we consider to be diverse.” – Nan Langowitz

“I don’t believe there’s a glass ceiling, I just believe there’s a thick layer of men.” – Laura Liswood

“Women must begin to believe in their own power.” – Eleanor Smeal

Overview

In the years since women have been introduced to “leadership studies,” what have we learned about women as leaders and the contexts that promote and sustain women’s leadership? In this session, scholars and activists took stock of the field, identifying barriers to progress, notable advances, and possible directions for continued research. Panelists addressed the following questions: What is our understanding of leadership, and what have we learned about being a “good” leader? When and how can women become “good” leaders? What key issues must be included on research agendas for women’s leadership?

Summary

Mary Hartman introduced the panelists and invited the audience to begin by posing their own questions about women’s leadership research. Audience members raised a number of provocative questions, such as: How can we complement and supplement the research efforts of those who study women’s leadership? What are the paradigms for studying women’s leadership, and what shifts, if any, have those paradigms seen? Have we moved in theory or praxis in the ways we approach studying women’s leadership? What is our understanding of leadership, and what does that definition leave out or ignore? How can we make change happen? Will all future leaders look just like their mentors, and if so, can we ever have a leadership representative of the diversity of women? Who is actually going to become a leader, and how do we possibly change that? What new, innovative research exists on pedagogical techniques for undergraduate leadership training? What do we do about women leaders who don’t actually support women’s interests?

Ella Bell next offered a staggering statistic: there are only six female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and only one of them is a woman of color. In light of such alarming under-representation, she heralded a study that sought to explore the causes of this trend, hypothesizing that women and people of color were allowed to lead only when companies were about to fold. However, critics argued that the study lacked an appropriate statistical sample size and was therefore not valid; such critics claimed that these researchers had locked themselves into a “research ghetto,” whose homogeneous composition and low numbers would never warrant serious attention and respect. Bell cited the study as a prime example of the restrictions that continue to plague women – questions that are politically unsafe, that have the capacity to produce insightful and truly creative research, are often sidelined or rejected in the name of fear and the protection of the status quo.

Thus, Bell argued that research is political, and that women must not only begin to ask the difficult questions, but also to support women’s research and research centers “so that researchers can do meaningful work and still earn a livelihood.” After all, Bell claimed, in an environment so hostile to women – where the largest group living in poverty is female and the only mainstream models of womanhood portray women either as desperate housewives or vicious predators – it is even more critical that we ask these bigger, bolder questions and dare to effect change. She ended by urging women to break out of unhealthy, unproductive frameworks – to stop divorcing women and people of color and women and sexuality – in order to create a more inclusive context in which to question, understand, and recreate the roles of women as leaders.

Nan Langowitz followed by stressing the importance of women leaders in the business world. She argued that although in some circles, business generally “has a dirty connotation,” in fact “business equals money, and money equals power, so if women aren’t involved in the business world, then we won’t get the power we need to make the changes we’d like to see.” She noted that gender inequality is prevalent throughout the corporate sector, from graduate business schools through top management positions: whereas most graduate schools are 50 percent women, business schools average at a mere 35-38 percent women; there are only 11 women CEOs in the Fortune 1000; and overall, women are considered “intruders” in the business world, a historically male space and structure.

Therefore, Langowitz argued, we must target this arena as a critical battleground for women’s rights and equality. Noting that we need not study women by comparing them to men, she posed the following questions as areas for further research: Why has the pipeline been leaking out of the corporate world, and what effect does that trend have on entrepreneurship among women? Does the corporate glass ceiling encourage women to quit and start their own companies? How are women unique in terms of leadership style, goals, and timing? How do we retrain and requalify women who want to return to the workforce, and how do organizations and corporations find these women? How do differences in national culture impact business culture and the lives of women?

Langowitz concluded by addressing the need to expand and diversify the feminist movement. “We have to get past the visual about what we consider to be diverse,” she said. Additionally, we must also work to better incorporate young women into the cause because sadly, many young women do not want to support feminism. It’s “a dirty word to them,” Langowitz noted. Thus, she posed reeducation and mentoring as possible solutions to the generational gap. The key to combating negative impressions of feminism, she claimed, was to reeducate young women about the definition of a “feminist” (a man or woman who believes in gender equality) and to implement meaningful mentoring relationships by using rigorous informational questionnaires to appropriately match younger and older women based on common interests and goals.

Building on Langowitz’s comments, Laura Liswood shared her experiences and insights as a woman working within the corporate sector. She concurred that the corporate arena is dominated by men, whose principal roles have been consistently reconfirmed by long-lasting myths of leadership that dictate how leaders should look and behave. According to this “great man theory of leadership,” she claimed, women are vulnerable and in need of rescuing, while men are the only individuals capable of having and holding power. Additionally, “we have a notion of what leaders have a tendency to look like, and that’s tall,” she said. In fact, 58 percent of Fortune 500 male CEOs are 6’2” or taller.

How have women struggled against these durable myths? As co-founder of the Council of Women World Leaders, Liswood discovered that the only answer is slowly and capriciously. When she began the Council, there were only 15 women world leaders; now there are 34 presidents and prime ministers. However, social progress does not necessarily follow the same forward-moving path as technological process. Women are often only permitted to lead when countries are in crisis, and “we can easily slip back into the dark ages socially,” she warned.

Therefore, she argued for more active women’s leadership and increased research. “We must find leaders to create the change to move us forward in terms of social progress…and we must study what happens when leaders come into power,” she insisted. Among research questions to be explored: What resources get allocated, and how and why? What kind of change do we want, and how can leaders implement it? Liswood emphasized that research must be digestible and accessible to non-academics if we are to communicate with a broad audience. Central to this research agenda should be a census-oriented study of the differences between historically in-power and out-of-power groups, she suggested. Liswood concluded by commenting that change is “dared by few, willed by more, and tolerated by all,” and that now more than ever, women need to start daring.

Finally, Eleanor Smeal closed the session by agreeing that leaders do not fit mythical molds – “leaders don’t always look like we imagine them to look like…[so] stop making snap judgments about who can lead…People we would never pick out to be leaders are often the ones who make real change,” she maintained. Smeal argued that leadership is situational and cultural, and that we must be more iconoclastic in our analysis. “Small women-owned businesses now employ more people in the United States than the Fortune 500,” and nonprofits, organizations led primarily by women, employ 15 percent of the labor force, she noted. Therefore, we must start considering and targeting these industries, elevating their importance, emphasizing the principal role of women, and creating power within our sector. “Women must begin to believe in our own power,” she exclaimed. Moreover, leadership studies that determine systemic changes to bring women and minorities to the fore are a critical component in this process to progress.

Smeal concluded with a reminder that women must stop putting themselves down: “Feminism is popular among young women and does have significant popular support,” she countered. She suggested that since women’s organizations have power and influence over half of the population, they must recognize, appreciate, and utilize their significant role and strength within society rather than consistently elevate men.

Contributed by Joanne Villanueva

Points for Action:

• Support women’s research and women’s research centers.

• Produce research that is digestible and accessible to non-academics; communicate in a way that non-specialists can understand.

• Encourage and engage in leadership studies around systemic changes that can create situations that bring women and racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities into power.