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Oct
23
Yeah, okay, I’m pretty excited that I actually know someone who has reached this pinnacle. I think that’s pretty cool even though it’s not me or my achievement. I wrote about it when it was first announced in January. But that was before Barack Obama became the Democratic Party’s nominee for president and John McCain selected Sarah Palin as his VP and the idea of what a leader looks like, especially one who is female, got the scrutiny it has in the several months.
Now, today, Debora Spar, who was one of my closest friends in college, will be inaugurated as the president of Barnard College. That just totally blows me away. Not because of what the role is or who it is. But that that’s the phase the women with whom I’ve been educated and worked and grown up with have gotten to.
Of course, there are so many faces and profiles of women whom we consider to be leaders (see here for an example from just this week), and our definition of who is a leader is not, at least for me, static. Every walk of life, every role we occupy, every industry, discipline, characteristic – has someone or someone with certain qualities – that we identify as a leader or characteristics of a leader.
What does a leader look like? Here’s one version, revealed in this article about Spar by Kate Taylor of The Daily Beast. An excerpt:
Debora Spar represents a brilliant choice. She is the first Barnard president to have come of age after the feminist revolution, giving her the easy confidence—not stridency—of someone who grew up feeling that all doors were open to her. She is, as one member of the search committee noted, exactly the kind of woman that most Barnard students will aspire to be. “I mean, forget about all the credentials and all the books she’s written,” a hedge-fund manager, Jolyne Caruso, said. “She’s a mother of three children; one of them is adopted. She’s got the work/life balance down pat. She’s in good physical shape, she runs, she’s pretty, she’s brilliant. These girls are really going to relate to her.”
She intends to be more than just a role model on campus; she hopes to be a symbol of the smart women Barnard churns out. In an interview with Quindlen in the summer issue of Barnard Magazine, Spar waxed admiringly about deposed Harvard president Larry Summers, who she said was—before his gaffe about women and science—doing “remarkable things to reestablish the role of the college president as a public intellectual.” It’s fair to guess that Spar will take on something of a Summers-like role, but perhaps with a bit more tact.
She is above all interested in women as leaders, or rather, in why (after all this time!) there aren’t more women in visible, high-powered roles. She has spent her career researching why women don’t reach the top levels of business, politics, law, etc., in proportionate numbers to men. As a political scientist, she wrote a no-holds-barred book about the fertility industry and why it is flawed as a “market” and detrimental to women. If she approaches the issues facing Barnard’s image with the same hardheaded, scientific approach, she stands to be a true force.
What does a leader look like to you? Wouldn’t it be great, maybe after the elections, to start a blog or series that focuses solely on profiling leaders, especially those in the NE Ohio community?
By Jill Miller Zimon at 9:04 am October 23rd, 2008 in Education, leadership, Women
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“I mean, forget about all the credentials and all the books she’s written,” a hedge-fund manager, Jolyne Caruso, said. “she’s a mother of three children; one of them is adopted. She’s got the work/life balance down pat. She’s in good physical shape, she runs, she’s pretty, she’s brilliant.”
As a Barnard alumna, I find this incredibly offensive. I am sick to death of women being judged on whether they are mothers and whether they are “pretty” and “in good physical shape”. I thought we’d gotten away from all that. It is, in fact, Spar’s “credentials and all the books she has written” that are important.
If the search committee indeed “forgot” about those things, and selected her for her looks and her children (even in part), then I fear for the future of my college.
Joan – thanks for reading and commenting.
Obviously I don’t know what she was thinking when she said that or why – she has her image of a leader, I guess.
But seriously? I can tell you that soon after it was announced, I know I read at least one thread on a Columbia student publication-related post – I can’t remember if it was a blog or not – that with great snark savaged Barnard by saying how ugly they thought Spar is.
Now – that’s not to justify Caruso’s remarks. But who knows.
Likewise – I agree – esp. every time one of the pundits talks about Sarah Palin’s attractiveness before anything else – you are right. It’s not part of the skill set that gets someone to the Barnard presidency, you would think.