Why Women Matter, Part 4

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

(Page 4 of 5)

It gets worse at the state level, where the number of women in politics has been stagnant at about 20 percent for a decade. Since few U.S. presidents emerge from nowhere they usually start in state feeder positions, then go national the lack of women in the political pipeline is a serious issue for electing a woman to the highest office. Four of our last five presidents have been governors, and all of the last five vice presidents have served in Congress. At the rate we're going, according to the National Women's Political Caucus, we won't see political parity for more than two centuries.

It would seem, then, that we still have a long way to go. Few women in top leadership, and a pipeline barely wet with them, translates directly into unilateral male choices for how we live, and that's not good. In the words of the Reverend Patricia Kitchen, a pastor at Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, we need a nation of "otherism."

"For over 200 years, the United States has been steered by male leadership who tend to lead from a 'self-centered, self-preservation' perspective. (Wars declared prematurely. Inhumane tax structures adopted. Environmental disregard. Labor practices which devalue workers. Third world sweatshops that crush the souls of foreign labor...all seem to serve powerful 'self' interests)," she said. "Women around the world are inclined to lead, their families and nations, from an 'other- centered' perspective."

Despite the dangers and complexities of the world growing armed conflicts and mounting debt, corporate irresponsibility and worldwide health crises men don't have to give it up or go it alone. All they have to do is share power and let women help, as equals.

A World of Difference

The core of what women bring to leadership a tendency toward greater inclusiveness, empathy, communication up and down hierarchies, focus on broader issues makes stronger government and richer business. I saw it myself during my first decades of paid work and community service. Then it started to be named.

The first time I saw the argument in one place was 1990, when Sally Helgesen published her book The Female Advantage. Its broadly acclaimed central thesis: Women's skill in relationships that ability to build webs of inclusion was better for business than the traditional system, which concentrated power in the hands of the few.

For her research Helgesen collected information in a diary while following women executives through their workdays. Using the diary style allowed her both to identify commonalities and to compare her women to male leaders studied in the same way in 1968 by management scientist Henry Mintzberg.

Here is some of what Mintzberg found in the men he studied: an unrelenting work pace with little time for other activity, heavy identity with the job, and difficulty sharing information. Helgesen found almost the opposite in women: steady workers who also made time for on-the-job breaks and nonwork activities, who saw their jobs as only one aspect of themselves, and who scheduled time to share information in the office.

As Helgesen says, women focused on the "ecology of leadership," managing longer range. And though both genders are oriented toward the big picture, there's a difference when it comes to women: "It encompasses a vision of society [women] relate decisions to their larger effect upon the role of the family, the American education system, the environment, even world peace."

Management guru Thomas J. Peters, coauthor of the best-selling In Search of Excellence, agrees. He sees women as more relational, less conscious of hierarchy, better listeners, and more able to avoid the aggression men can sometimes bring to management. In fact, he published a booklet in 2001 entitled Women Roar, and here is how he describes it on his Web site (capitalization is his): "The evidence is clear! (1) WOMEN ARE BETTER LEADERS THAN MEN (under the conditions of the New Economy) (2) WOMEN ARE THE WORLD'S BIGGEST MARKET OPPORTUNITY (BY FAR)... and are wildly underserved... Our story: WOMEN ROAR. WOMEN RULE."

As far back as 1982, when Excellence was first published, Peters and his writing partner Robert H. Waterman Jr. put forward a womanlike set of management principles (though they were not identified as such at the time). More than twenty years later we have a refined Peters principle: "Women as the new economy's natural leaders." With tongue in cheek, he even suggested to an audience of radio executives in 2001 that they fire their male salespeople. "It may be against the law, but you'll be rich." He's convinced the future belongs to women: "This [women] thing is bigger than the Internet."

Before there was an Internet, before there was television in fact, before talking movies there was Mary Parker Follett, who may quite possibly be ground zero in the study of female oriented management theory. I found out about her when I read a 2001 Wellesley College study on women's leadership. Follett wrote Creative Experience in 1924, a book that "extolled the virtues of collaboration, coordination, sharing power and information...empowering the workforce as opposed to having power over them." Follett saw a work world filled with interconnections. Of course, when she spoke on the topic (which was often), she would have been addressing men, since there were virtually no women leading at that time. Follett, being a woman of her own era, also didn't point out that these qualities were most often found in females; she "simply advocated the democratic, participatory style as more effective and more sound from a business perspective."

Follett's theme of collaboration has been replicated in management literature through the years. In fact, after World War II, leadership ideas very similar to hers were introduced in Japan with great enthusiasm, and they became a centerpiece of the "Japanese style." In the 1980s, this style was introduced with relish to the British and Americans; little did they know its female origins.

I remember those times well. I was director of women's programs at Drake then, helping the Des Moines business community to integrate women, whose primary experience had been in the home and community, into the workplace. The very men who impatiently asked why my "retreads" couldn't make a decision without consensus rushed to hire experts on Japanese quality circles, where workers were personally consulted about process and production. It would have been funny if it hadn't also been frustrating for the women: These men valued a so-called foreign system while devaluing the same system when it was practiced right under their noses by women.

Times have changed. Now male CEOs speak freely about their emotional intelligence, or EQ, a concept popularized in a 1995 book by Daniel Goleman that refers to components like sensitivity to others and communication skills. I heard Goleman talk about his best seller shortly after its release, and I asked him, "Aren't you largely describing women's intelligence?" He hedged, gave a nod to my point, and said half kiddingly that he wanted the book to sell. Goleman confirmed my suspicion that intelligent men knew these characteristics were very female and, therefore, very risky to embrace as such unless you don't mind being devalued.

In the Wellesley study that resurrected Follett, sixty executive women from all walks talked about how women lead differently: They are better communicators and listeners, more nurturing, more willing to involve others in decision making, and more likely to roll up their sleeves and work with the team. They described women as having "a much stronger sense of connectedness to others and of being part of the whole. [They] are much more gratified by leadership that involves creating a shared purpose, with the leader being part of that whole."

© 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.