Go Lead Idaho

Motivating women to lead and demonstrating why it matters

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Women & Leadership: Dr Caroline Heldman

With perhaps the most tantalizing speech title, Dr Caroline Heldman took the stage to deliver her talk on The Sexy Lie: How Objectification Culture Harms Women Leadership 

Dr. Caroline Heldman is the chair of the Politics Department at Occidental College. She is also a political commentator for MSNBC, Fox Business News, RT America, and Al Jazeera English. Dr. Heldman’s work has been featured in the top journals in her field, including theAmerican Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, Political Psychology, andPolitical Communications. She co-edited the popular book, Rethinking Madame President: Is the US Ready for a Woman in the White House? (2007). Dr. Heldman’s work has also been featured in popular publications, including the New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Ms. Magazine, The Huffington Post, and The Daily Beast.

Andrew Crisp of Boise State’s Blue Review did a great preview piece on Caroline earlier this week where she addresses many of the barriers she discussed in today’s talk,

“There are lots of barriers to women getting into positions of leadership, which starts with the socialization of little girls. We often think of barriers to women in leadership as a glass ceiling right before women receive the top corporate position, but a better metaphor is a labyrinth: women are discouraged from being leaders at a very young age, whether it’s the careers that they’re tracked into, or their peers not supporting them being ambitious,”

Four Barriers to Women’s Leadership

Ambition Gap

People expect women to act modestly, even if they are already highly accomplished. Women are discouraged from being ambitious from a very early age. There is a lack of support for female ambition in all walks of life.

Leadership Evaluation Bias

Men are still seen as default leaders in the US and Europe (per Catalyst in 2012). Male college students are more likely to evaluate female leaders as submissive now than a decade ago.

The Double Bind

We equate leadership with male attributes. They have to perform certain attributes of masculinity to be seen as leaders. But when they do, they are evaluated poorly as not ‘properly feminine’. Women who ‘act female’ are rated negatively for being weak, but if they act ‘male’ they are rated negatively for being too tough (Belkin, 2007). Women are penalized for expressing anger in the workplace, while men are not.

The Sexy Lie

Caroline began the portion of the talk focused on her barrier of The Sexy lie by addressing our Objectification culture and sharing the Sex Object Test she has developed to help people understand what sexual objectification is.

The core of her argument – sexy is not empowering.

We have a subject/object dichotomy. And subjects act, and objects are acted upon. There are a slew of  internal effects of self-objectification

  • depression
  • habitual nody monitoring
  • eating disorders
  • body shape
  • depressed cognitive functioning
  • sexual dysfunction
  • lower self-esteem
  • lower GPA
  • lower political efficacy

External effects of objectification

  • female competition
  • erasure of middle aged women
  • lower perceptions of competence
  • dehumanization

As noted by Blue Review, and stated in Caroline’s TEDx talk on The Sexy Lie:

“We raise our little boys to view their bodies as tools to master their environments,” Heldman tells the audience early in her speech. “We raise our little girls to view their bodies as projects to constantly be improved. What if women started to view their bodies as tools to master their environment? As tools to get you from one place to the next? As these amazing vehicles for moving through the world in a new way?”

Caroline left the crowd with a great call to action – a list of personal actions we can take to curb the objectification culture:

  • Stop consuming toxic media
  • Stop playing ‘the tapes’ (tapes in our mind about imposter syndrome, body monitoring)
  • Stop seeking heterosexual male attention
  • Stop competing with other women
  • Start enjoying your body as a physical instrument
  • Start focusing on personal development that isn’t related to beauty culture
  • Start complimenting girls/women on their actions and accomplishments
  • Embrace ambition and encourage it in others

Political actions to take to combat objectification culture

  • A Journalist Code of Ethics for coverage of female candidates
  • Blog activism – the fourth wave of feminism
  • Consumer activism
Source: Ms.com blog

(Best and most random insight from Dr Caroline Heldman…she likes to parkour – ”the physical discipline of training to overcome any obstacle within one’s path by adapting one’s movements to the environment,” can be done any time, anywhere. I especially enjoy jumping off bike racks between classes while I’m dressed in a suit.)

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Women & Leadership: Karen Crouse

“I’m so used to being tolerated that being celebrated is a unique experience!” New York Times columnist Karen Crouse led off her talk ‘Lady in the Locker Room: The Bare Truth’ with an honest and humble insight.

Think she definitely deserved and received more than a polite golf clap. A bit about Karen:

Karen Crouse has been a sports columnist for The New York Times since June 2005. Prior to joining The Times, she worked as a sports columnist for four years at the Palm Beach Post.

Ms. Crouse is a graduate of the University of Southern California, where she majored in journalism and was a member of the Trojan women’s swim team. She grew up in Santa Clara, Calif., and started her newspaper career in Savannah, Ga., at the Savannah News-Press.

Karen led with a personal reflection on the quote we’ve heard several speakers share, “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you realize why.”

She shared her lifechanging moment, when as a 13 year-old she realized the power of the written word, and how they could positively impact someone she looked up to.

Rather than trying to summarize her amazing story, I’ll link to this  great column she penned for the New York Times about it: Inspiration for a Swimmer and Writer

We build up the athletes and see what we want to see, we don’t see what is really there – and that’s the crux of a responsibility Karen feels to really tell the true stories, like those of Amanda Beard – For Champion Olympic Swimmer, A Simpler Time

I look at it as less of a sports assignment, but being an anthropologist who’s been assigned to this patriarchal tribe called golf. This is the last male bastion of chauvinism and sexism, the country club golf set.  I feel like I have to try and changes these people’s minds one person at a time. And that leads to Augusta…

Here is Karen’s column on the Masters: Touchy Day at August National Men’s Club

And then, this happened: New York Times reporter says she’d skip Masters to protest membership policies Karen shared the difficulty of covering the Masters that week and the tension in her newsroom in the days and weeks that followed.

But within the next year, August announced the admission of two female members. Karen noted, “I’d like to think that in some small way the discomfort I put myself through at Augusta was not for nought.”

We don’t only have to talk the talk but walk the walk – and that means not only participating in but supporting women in their endeavors in the sports realm.

If that means clicking on tht woman’s golf story so it gets one more page view, please do it!

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Women & Leadership: Deanna Oppenheimer

“You just don’t get to be in venues and places with these people. Take this time as a privilege and an honor and a personal call to action to take something away from it.”

A good reminder from Deanna Oppenheimer as she took the stage for her talk  ‘Leading on the Diagonal in a Vertically Challenged World.’

Deanna’s story is one that began in Parma, Idaho and led to her being a global financial powerhouse.

Recognized globally as one of the decade’s most influential leaders in
financial services, Deanna Oppenheimer is an acclaimed turnaround
strategist known for her ability to transform entrenched institutions
into customer-centric champions.

Hired by Barclays in 2005 to renovate its very British, 350-year old
retail bank from the inside out, Deanna joined the company at a time
most employees were not expecting or ready for that. Six years later,
the once staid organization had blossomed into a Retail Banking
powerhouse, and Deanna was ranked as one of the two most powerful
women in banking.

On Business Success 

One of the most important things you will get out of any type of business career is a mentor – being one or being mentored. Because it is a two way street. But another important aspect is the move from mentorship to sponsorship.

The women reason fall out of big corporate jobs, is not because they can’t get their start, it is not to do so much with their quality of work. It is all the other stuff of life that goes on. And their lack of a sponsor relationship in their career.

What Deanna identified as key to career success:

  • A curiosity to love solving problems
  • A curiosity to love diverse people
  • A curiosity to add more skillsets that keep you relevant and current

And if you have all of those attributes it’s exciting, and people want to give you opportunities and follow you for solutions.

On Leadership

There is now a real shift in society that is demanding a new leadership style and change. A tipping point has arrived.

There is a radical shift of control from the few elite at the top to the masses.

There is a vacuum of leadership that requires new skills and motivations.

Those we are leading are demanding it. They are demanding greater accountability. And they have more power than ever at their fingertips.

Success comes when those that are lead feel empowered, inspired and indeed…led. It’s not about the leaders, it is about those we lead.

Companies are experiencing a shift from an internal controlling culture to one of engagement.

On Diagonal Leadership

Traditionally companies organize themselves vertically. But now, the diagonal has come into effect. You have to have real information sharing and transparency. In the old world, information hoarded is power. In the new world, information shared is power. Hierarchy is useful and necessary, but informal networks lead to most strategic change

(Here is a presentation Deanna gave recently explaining the diagonal leadership approach.)

She left the audience with some pointed and practical thoughts on what will make a difference in a woman’s career:

  • Be authentic and demonstrate real expertise: don’t get there on the back of a quota, don’t undersell what you can deliver
  • Don’t try to out-man a man: enjoy your femininity
  • Have a set of icebreaker topics that appeal to a diverse group of business people
  • Document your results and in a factual way, SHARE THEM. Don’t wait for someone to recognize your performance, inform them of it
  • Your family is your backbone. But approach it as a team and share in responsibilities
  • Don’t undershoot your career aspirations.

And her parting words of inspiration…

Go forth and be a leader of one.

Fire your engine, stay on the tracks and keep moving forward.

Best way to predict the future is for you to be the one to create it.

 

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Women & Leadership: Justice Sandra Day O’Connor

An event attendee tweeted: Justice O’Connor leaving the stage. Quick, cue rocking guitar riff!

Source: The Arbiter

She couldn’t have been more on point. In her second time on the stage at the Women & Leadership event Justice Sandra Day O’Connor captivated the audience like a rockstar sharing her feisty, pointed commentary and passion.

And giving interviewer Dr David Adler of the Andrus Center a run for his money.

During her speech, Justice O’Connor briefly touched on her time both witnessing history and being a part of it on the bench.

But the bulk of her address focused on her current passion – a commitment to improving the access to and awareness of civic education in our country.

Calling it the most challenging work and most rewarding of her lifetime in public service – Justice O’Connor helped launch http://www.icivics.org in 2009, to prepare young Americans to become knowledgeable, engaged 21st century citizens by creating free and innovative educational materials

(Profiles of Next Generation Learning: iCivics from NextGenLC (NGLC) on Vimeo.)

As she so aptly noted, the skills and knowledge of citizenship are not handed down through the gene pool – civid education must be perpetual. And if we believe what Eleanor Roosevelt said, that ‘the true purpose of education is good citizenship,’ then civics can no longer be an afterthought in our public schools.

Justice O’Connor eloquently stated,

Not everyone is going to grow up to be Bill Gates or Sheryl Sandberg or Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, but everyone is going to grow up to be a citizen.

For our democracy to endure, we have to ensure are citizens are well informed.

Democracy is a sustained and perpetual conversation about how best to govern.

It is not a spectator sport. We don’t have a government by the majority, we have a government by those who get involved and participate.

We have an moral imperative to lead. To continue our history of trailblazing. And to help secure the vibrancy of our democracy by ensuring strong civic education and an informed engaged citizenry.

Because as she so aptly noted, there is no charge or cost to be a leader, just hard work.

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Transforming America: Women & Leadership Conference

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Go Lead Idaho is proud to be a community sponsor of the Andrus Center’s Transforming America: Women and Leadership in the 21st Century event.

The conference is focused on the accomplishments of women leaders from business, government, science, the media and other fields and seeks to showcase their unique perspectives on women in leadership positions.

The conference will investigate the work that remains to create what Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has called the opportunity for all women “to earn respect, responsibility, advancement and remuneration based on ability.”

Justice O’Connor spoke at a kickoff reception on Wednesday night, and we couldn’t help but think back on several of her amazing words of wisdom during her time on the bench…

We don’t accomplish anything in this world alone… and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one’s life and all the weavings of individual threads form one to another that creates something.

I think the important thing about my appointment is not that I will decide cases as a woman, but that I am a woman who will get to decide cases.

Do the best you can in every task, no matter how unimportant it may seem at the time. No one learns more about a problem than the person at the bottom

And if you need to get chills to kickoff your conference experience, take a moment to listen to President Reagan making history by the appointment of Justice O’Connor

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