{"id":1194,"date":"2009-01-15T08:15:15","date_gmt":"2009-01-15T13:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/wp\/?p=1194"},"modified":"2009-01-15T08:15:15","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T13:15:15","slug":"if-barack-had-been-barbara","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/?p=1194","title":{"rendered":"If Barack Had Been Barbara"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Twitter colleague sent me a link to an article in the Harvard Business Review “Women and the Vision Thing”<\/a>.
\nAccording to the researchers, women score higher than men in all leadership areas except for one, a quality they call “vision”: “the ability to see opportunities, craft strategy based on a broad view of the business, and inspire others.”
\nThe authors conclude from this that gender bias is, thus, not responsible for limiting women’s leadership opportunities, but rather that it’s a matter of style: successful women don’t fit the “mental model” of a visionary.<\/p>


\nThe researchers have proposed three reasons for this:
\n– We women identify “vision” with self-promotion and bluster and, thus, discount its importance.
\n– We believe organizations would be less forgiving of us if we went out on a limb than they would be of a man.
\n– We do as much as men to shape the future but go about in a way that is less charismatic: non-directive, sharing credit, involving more other people.
\nWell, if that’s not gender bias, then I’ll eat my hat.
\nThe HBR article suggests that the results of last year’s Democratic primary proves their point: Hillary lost because she was perceived as a policy wonk whereas Barack, the Marketer of the Year, won because he was seen as a “charismatic visionary”.
\nI recalled an incident in my own career in which, as the director of a 5 department division, I was asked to give a presentation on our work to an internal audience.
\nIt was strongly suggested that the audience would appreciate my introducing my reports and asking them to say a few words.
\nThis doesn’t sound so bad, except that no other director – all men – was expected to share the credit in this way.
\nIn other words, I’m suggesting that adopting a “male” leadership style, as the study authors seem to suggest, would boomerang on a female leader. She’d be called (as many of us have been, including Senator Clinton) aggressive, castrating, self-promoting, etc.
\nGeraldine Ferraro got her teeth knocked out by the liberals, both men and women, for stating the obvious fact that Obama got elected because of luck.
\nThinking about this in the context of the HBR article, I thought back to other politicians who might have made excellent Presidential candidates except that they lacked one or two of these lucky qualities.
\nBarbara Jordan (1936-1996), daughter of a Baptist minister, was the first Black and the first woman to be elected to Congress from the state of Texas.
\nWhen she came to national prominence as a member of the House Judiciary Committee’s Watergate hearings, she was recognized as one of the finest speakers any of us had ever heard. Her commanding voice and knowledge of constitutional law made her a popular and charismatic figure on the national political scene.
\nCongresswoman Jordan was asked to give the keynote at the 1976 Democratic National Convention which eventually nominated Jimmy Carter. There was no possibility that Jordan would have been a candidate herself, even though in retrospect, she was equal or superior to Carter in intellect, knowledge and oratorical style.
\nConsider the parallels between Jordan and Obama: both Black. Both young, in their forties. Both trailblazers. Both short-service national political figures who came to prominence as a result of their public oratory in high-visibility venues. Both deemed progressive and favored by the liberal wing of the Democratic party.
\nIf Barack had been Barbara in the year 2008, would the outcome of the Democratic nomination and the Presidential election been the same?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Twitter colleague sent me a link to an article in the Harvard Business Review “Women and the Vision Thing”. According to the researchers, women score higher than men in all leadership areas except for one, a quality they call … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}