Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World - Hardcover

Wilson, Marie C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670032743 ISBN 13: 9780670032747

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2004

Synopsis

Provides a passionate call to action for the increased presence of women in vital leadership roles in America, arguing that we need to take advantage of the unique and valuable contributions that women can make in colving some of the problems that affect our world.

About this title

Review:

Ms. Foundation President Marie Wilson is looking for some good women and men to become "post heroic" leaders. In Closing the Leadership Gap, Wilson focuses on the virtues of sharing power by skewering culture bound male leadership styles and celebrating the arguable premise that women use a similar "recipe" of leadership values such as inclusion and cooperation.

As co-founder of the White House project on women's leadership, Wilson is passionate in her belief that women's voices at the table offer an opportunity to shape policy around the marginalized issues of violence, education and healthcare. Making room for women at the top also gives men permission to bring their soft side to work." As she explains, "Both men and women must be in power to moderate the influence of masculinity in all of us." Such polemic does not prevent Wilson from making a persuasive case for role expansion rather than role reversal. Her practical approach to developing women as leaders is two pronged. First, individual women must confront four "Scarlett A's"(authority, ambition, ability, authenticity) that create barriers to leadership. Then, she describes the cultural and institutional changes that would involve men and women in sharing domestic leadership.

Her examples are fascinating and eclectic--including anecdotes about A-list leaders such as Hilary Clinton and Paramount Chair Sherry Lansing; research about hairstyles, husbands, and hemlines of female candidates; and tales from her election to the Des Moines City Council. Wilson puts on gender glasses to examine the "celluloid ceiling" in Hollywood. In all of her examples, the goal is nothing less than changing expectations of both sexes. Even those readers who may not agree that women share similar--even superior--leadership values, will applaud her goal: The opportunity for women and men to integrate the satisfactions of leadership and family life. --Barbara Mackoff

From the Back Cover:

"Every man who’s in despair over world leadership—and every woman who fears her gender is a barrier to leadership—will find hope and help in [this book]."
—Gloria Steinem

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0670032743
• ISBN 13: 9780670032747
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208