| |
By
Mary S. Hartman
Director, Institute for Women's Leadership
Striking changes in women's lives over the last 50 years have brought
shifts in work roles, family lives, political and educational access,
and social awareness. What is now more obvious than ever is what has
not changed, or rather what has barely begun to change — namely,
women's underrepresentation in positions of power and leadership.
To understand the complexities of women's roles in society and to
promote women's advancement to leadership, we need:
 | access to the very best data and interpretive analyses about the world's women in all their diversity,
|
|
| programs that empower people to imagine and implement new approaches
to challenging issues concerned with gender and social change,
and
|
|
| support in amplifying women's voices in all the forums — local,
national, and global — where opinions are shaped and policies
made. |
These critical needs can best be met in settings where claims about
women and change are subjected to informed scrutiny, and where the
experiences and perspectives of women are fully taken into account.
The Institute for Women's Leadership at Rutgers, The State University
of New Jersey, brings together into a vital partnership a comprehensive
array of resources devoted to women's lives. The six members of
the consortium include Douglass College, the Department of Women's
and Gender Studies, the Center for American Women and Politics,
the Institute for Research on Women, the Center for Women's Global
Leadership, and the Center for Women and Work. Together these entities
are generating new knowledge about women's leadership and identifying
the skills and approaches that enable women of all generations to
embrace responsibility for positive change.
The participating members of the institute see themselves as actualizing
a vision of leadership that has been articulated in feminist thought,
but rarely realized. That vision does not begin with the world "out
there" and with attempts to educate women to become equal players
in existing political, social, and economic structures. It begins
instead with the individual person. Through approaches rooted in
women's and gender studies, it encourages women and men alike to
perceive the world differently, to become capable of making different
judgments because their view of the world now includes a more complete
picture of women. Once that happens, they are more ready to envision
leadership in new ways as well. They also are more able to recognize
effective leadership as participatory, to acknowledge the importance
of taking an active part in decision making, and to take personal
responsibility for social change.
|
|
