BARNARD NEWS

THE BARNARD SUMMIT: WOMEN, LEADERSHIP AND THE FUTURE, OCTOBER 27, 2001

By Lucas Bernays Held

When Janet Reno was asked whether her tenure as the nation’s first woman attorney general had changed the country, Reno recalled the words of a senator that: "I seemed like a nice lady, but I sounded more like a social worker than a prosecutor."

Six years later, she told an audience of nearly 1,000 at the Oct. 27 Barnard Summit: Women, Leadership and the Future, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee asked her to testify on parenting skills in child development. "So, I think we made some changes."

"I actually happen to believe there’s no ‘glass ceiling’ – I think it’s just a thick layer of men."
-- Laura Liswood, general secretary of the Council of Women World Leaders based at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government

Hosted by Barnard President Judith Shapiro, the summit included more than 20 women leaders and was designed to take stock of gender equity, and identify both barriers and means for more progress.
Harvard Business School Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter recalled that a few decades ago she was asked whether women could be leaders. "Today, I get questions from the media about whether women are better leaders."

But Kanter warned the equation "difference better" is as dangerous as "difference worse" because, she said, "women come in all shapes and sizes."

Catalyst President Sheila Wellington said studies on the presumed different leadership styles of men and women "don’t conclude terribly much at all. You give me your woman who is kind and loving – I’ll give you mine who’s tough." And such myths may be partly why progress has been "painfully, painfully slow" – while about half of managers are women, only 12 percent of corporate officers are.

"I seemed like a nice lady, but I sounded more like a social worker than a prosecutor."
-- Former Attorney General Janet Reno, recalling the words of a senator when she first took office

"I sharpened my understanding of gender issues by reading feminist literature," said Mamphela Ramphele, managing director of The World Bank, "And yet I look at your public domain and I’m amazed by how little seems to have changed."

Laura Liswood, general secretary of the Council of Women World Leaders based at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, quipped: "I actually happen to believe there’s no ‘glass ceiling’ – I think it’s just a thick layer of men."

The need for what Kanter termed "flexibility in institutions to allow people to manage their multiple commitments" at home and at work drew much discussion.

Dina Dublon, chief financial officer of JP Morgan Chase & Co., said she had risen to her post both because of "the right men giving me the opportunity to be there in the workplace" and "the right man at home who was more than willing to share with me, in fact to primary responsibility, as a parent." That, psychologist Carol Gilligan, warned was often difficult given the "shame" felt by men who stay at home to raise children.

Shapiro noted that the nation’s reliance on the "Henry Higgins approach to gender equity – ‘Why can’t a woman be more like a man?’ " – meant devaluing what has traditionally been "women’s work" in the family and community.

And Ann Crittenden, author of The Price of Motherhood, said, "I’ve concluded that the whole country is free-riding on the unpaid labor of the people who are performing the family work."
Further progress, Reno predicted, would come when we have a president of the United States who is a woman of the stature of Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Dwight Eisenhower.

Sponsors included JP Morgan Chase, The New York Times, the Ford Foundation, Goldman Sachs Foundation; with organizational partners Families and Work Institute, The White House Project, Milestone Capital Management, and the Winds of Change Foundation.