Why Women Matter

Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World
by Marie C. Wilson

An impassioned examination of the vital importance of women in leadership roles-in politics as well as business-by a renowned women's issues advocate.

Insightful and inspiring, Closing the Leadership Gap is a call to action for the increased presence of women in powerful leadership positions in our country. A leading women's advocate and cofounder of the White House Project, Marie C. Wilson argues that while our nation sits on a world spinning with crises from terrorism and weapons of mass destruction to a fragile economy and corporate greed, half of its natural resources women have not been tapped for their uniquely valuable contribution to solving these problems that only they can provide.

Rich with historical context and supported by a wealth of current data and innovative research, this book explains chapter by chapter the leadership gap between women and men and the deeply ingrained cultural factors that continue to create resistance to women at the top. It also explores the new insights and strategies women are using to leverage their power of authority, ambition, ability, and authenticity have been denied women and how they are claiming these vital qualities for themselves. Written with passion and documented with lively behind-the-scenes stories from the trenches, Closing the Leadership Gap argues for women's leadership in all spheres and offers steps to get us there.

Chapter 1

All of my adult life I have preached the virtues of power sharing between men and women. The arrangement seemed not only fair, but also obvious: Women populate half the democracy; we should occupy half the positions of leadership both for gender equity and because women, a natural resource, should be mined for energy.

Now when I think of women in leadership, I think of it not only as the fair thing to do, but also as the only thing to do. In a few short years the world has become very unstable. Terrorists attacked us on our soil; in response we waged war against Afghanistan and Iraq. The formerly robust U.S. economy will soon sag under the biggest deficit in its history. Corporate greed has wiped out whole companies along with hundreds of thousands of jobs. Millions of Americans continue to live without adequate health care.

When I look at the issues we face, and when I think of the changes we need, I am as convinced as I have ever been that our future depends on the leadership of women not to replace men, but to transform our options alongside them.

I grew up in the 1940s and 1950s, when women were truly limited to a supporting role. I was Homecoming Queen and a class officer (but not the president). I was a cheerleader. I won beauty contests in my hometown of Atlanta. I married poor but with promise, then nearly went mad in the isolation of a small apartment with a baby. Through the years, while minding a growing family and the household chores, I finished my B.A. in philosophy and my master's degree in education.

My first professional job (I had been a church volunteer and had worked in the civil rights movement) was at Drake University as director of women's programs. To help women like me, I crafted economic development programs, job shares, and training for female "retreads" reentering the workforce after raising a family. These concepts are accepted today, but in the 1970s they were considered edgy.

I left Drake to make more money for our family of five children, several of whom were approaching college age. My experience as a social entrepreneur landed me an executive position in education and human resources with business entrepreneurs men who were instrumental in creating the first cash machines in America. It seemed a natural fit, but it wasn't. This banking association reflected the more conservative banking community it served. My modest efforts to modernize their views of women were considered dangerous and revolutionary. They probably would have fired me if my division hadn't been making money.

If you strip away the particulars, I have led an American woman's life running a complicated household, doing what I had to do to financially support the family, managing the home while bringing in a paycheck, and suppressing screams as my ideas were trivialized in the workplace.

It only made me trust women all the more, which was why I couldn't resist the dare of a friend to apply for the job of executive director at the Ms. Foundation for Women in New York City. I doubted those easterners would consider hiring a midwestern woman with southern roots. I was wrong. So in the mid 1980s, I left both a newly won city council seat and the banking job to run the foundation (best known for a program we created in 1993, Take Our Daughters to Work). Finally, I had found my fit, and I helped build one of the largest women's foundations in America.

At the Ms. Foundation we are social entrepreneurs with a practical eye on today and a vision for tomorrow. We take on issues that directly affect women's lives economic development, safety, and reproductive health, for instance which is why we knew we had to have substantial numbers of women at the top in America to help women at all levels. We saw what happened when we didn't. Hence, the White House Project, whose mission is to advance women's leadership in every sector, up to and including the presidency, changing society from a system built on the labor of women to one led equally by their vision.

Never has this been more necessary than now, when so many issues are our issues: education, health and elder care, and violence in all forms. In the past these concerns have been marginalized because of their connection to women; today, they are on everyone's agenda. And though war may not be our traditional battleground, it is the arena where women are needed most, to make and maintain the peace.

Men and women must be in power to moderate the influence of masculinity on all of us. It is this power sharing that will provide a different voice at the table, giving women the opportunity to shape policy in line with our values and giving men any permission they need to bring all of themselves to leadership, including their softer side.

Right now, for all its strides, our country is tremendously imbalanced in gender leadership. Of 435 seats in the House of Representatives, only 59 are occupied by women; of 100 senators, only 14 are women. Only 24 women have ever been governors in the United States. Women are nearly half the workforce, yet we make up only 12 percent of top executives and 15.7 percent of corporate officers; we hold a mere 12.4 percent of board seats in five hundred of the country's largest companies.

Internationally, the United States ranks sixtieth in women's political leadership, behind Sierra Leone and tied with Andorra. Even in so-called third world countries like India, huge strides have been made to bring women into power. Norway, whose parliament is 36.4 percent women, will vote soon on proposed legislation that would make the boards of every publicly traded company include at least 40 percent women by 2005. Yet here at home, despite the enormous gains we have made in the last twenty-five years, the "cultural ideal" for a woman remains that of wife and mother.

If you find this as hard to believe as I do, just look at the snail's pace of structural change that would allow women and men to fully integrate work and family. Women routinely work outside the home (mostly in low-paying jobs), yet we are still expected to be the primary caregivers, responsible for everything domestic. I truly believe that if we install enough women in leadership, they will create new policies for old institutions, shifting the burden from one set of shoulders to many, allowing women (and men) to be good parents and great leaders. And women will add their own recipe of strong values inclusion, communication across lines of authority, the work of caring, relationship building all of which would increase satisfaction and productivity everywhere.

But how do we get there? That's what this book is about.

It is not a scholarly work and it is not comprehensive; it is a book about experience my experience and the lessons I've learned backed by research conducted and gathered at the White House Project and the Ms. Foundation. It is a book of stories and facts, historical and current, with suggestions for how we might all, in our own way, put more women at the top, possibly even ourselves. If empirical data and hands-on experience have taught me anything, it is this: Change must be sweeping, and it won't be easy. When it comes to women's leadership, we live in a land of deep resistance, with structural and emotional impediments burned into the cultures of our organizations, into our society, and into the psyches and expectations of both sexes. The problem is layered, as is the solution.

That's why numbers matter. A single woman leader or a few women in a larger group are tokens; each token has to prove she's man enough for the job. We saw it played out in the seventies, as America began to deal with gender and race in the workplace. Women and minorities were scattered throughout corporations at the time one here and one there, isolated as stereotypes, often unable to speak their minds unless they agreed with the dominant conclusion. How in the world could anyone fit in under these circumstances? Often we didn't, and it was used as proof that we shouldn't be in power. As the first and only in the workplace, we were objects of suspicion and derision.

© 2006 Penguin, a division of Penguin Putnam, used by permission.

About the Author

Marie C. Wilson is cofounder and president of the White House Project, which she launched to advance women's leadership in all sectors. She was president of the Ms. Foundation for Women for more than twenty years, through which she cocreated Take Our Daughters to Work Day. A frequent guest speaker, she has been quoted in numerous national news outlets.