Marie Wilson, Founder and President, The White House Project
Picture this: A problem of vital importance emerges in your community, and you are asked to gather a team you deem essential to its solution. Then you are told you can't use half of the collected intelligence. That is basically the problem we face in politics and boardrooms across America—we systemically neglect one of our nation's most vital resources: women.
Women are more than half of the U.S. population, yet we still occupy between 16% and 20% of the leadership positions across major sectors of society. Research consistently shows that when women lead side by side with men, more alternatives are offered, more skill sets are used, and more out-of-the-box thinking occurs from both genders. Linda Tarr-Whelan, in Women Lead the Way: Your Guide to Stepping Up to Leadership and Changing the World, understands this resource crisis from decades of observation and personal experience, and she wants women like you (and those you know) to solve it, once and for all.
Linda's “30% Solution” advocates for truly balanced leadership, with women holding at least 30% of the seats at any power table. This percentage keeps the focus off gender and on the agenda. It is this critical mass of numbers, as I too have preached through the years, which will create a more productive work environment, a revitalized society, increased economic growth, and reinvigorated democratic participation.
What most people don't know (Americans often think women already run the world) is that we fall further behind every year. When I started The White House Project a decade ago to bring more women into leadership across sectors, our country was thirty-seventh in the world in women's political participation. We are now a pathetic sixty-ninth. Norway, as an example, is far ahead of us; that country passed a law requiring that publicly traded companies have at least 40% women on their boards, and if these firms failed to do so by the deadline, they were fined. Guess what? They met the deadline. Corporate boards in the United States, by comparison, are 17% female, with no structural change on tap to alter that.
Women Lead the Way is an optimistic book focused on adding women's strengths to decision making precisely at a time when these very strengths are most required. Collaboration, consensus building, a focus on relationships and partnerships, and a deep commitment to both family and work are badly needed; women are known to consistently bring these values to the table. Linda builds the case for balanced leadership based on credible business and political data from around the globe, showing clearly the bottom-line benefits. Women are catalysts for change, but the results are a win-win for everyone.
My book, Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World, like Linda's, deals with the importance of women's leadership and the cultural challenges to it before we can be fully accepted. Linda's inspiring and engaging work adds compelling research, international experience, and personal stories, and then provides you with practical tips to help you climb the ladder and wedge the door open for other women to follow. As the old spiritual says, “Lift as you rise.”
Linda and I have been professional colleagues and friends for twenty years. We found ourselves in national leadership positions in the '80s when I became president of the Ms. Foundation for Women and Linda was president of the Center for Policy Alternatives. With unusual career paths, both of us were somewhat unlikely candidates for these jobs. We began to collaborate on breakthrough projects and to share stories of our dreams and our children.
The book is packed with personal insights from Linda's long, fruitful career as an ambassador, nurse, union organizer, policy expert, business-woman, and consultant. Her diverse career allows her to dispel the myths and stereotypes that stand in our way, and to build confidence as you move toward bigger dreams.
Linda's dream, and mine, is having more and more women realize the world needs them in leadership. Research by The White House Project and so many other organizations supports the knowledge that Americans are comfortable with women leaders in the majority of sectors, and they even see women as better at most aspects of leadership. Take confidence in these findings as you explore the possibilities in your own life.
Finally, don't miss this book's “how to” strategies, straight from a woman who's been there and done that. Give this book to yourself or to another woman you think should be a leader. And make sure the men in your life read it, too, so they clearly see the advantages to them, their companies, and the country when more smart, savvy women are seated in their rightful spots at the tables of power.