Friday reflection
Seeing women lead
More women leaders — sounds good, right?
Of course it does. If it didn’t, I doubt you’d be a subscriber of mine!
But let’s back up. What does the word “leader” conjure for you?
Elected officials, executives — these are the roles our media and culture most herald as leaders. (Just trying searching for the word “leader” on any stock photo site, and see what comes up.)
But to me, the word “leader” also describes mothers, activists, and anyone else who matches Brene Brown’s excellent definition:
“A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes and has the courage to develop that potential.”
- Brene Brown
Leadership is a way of being in the world. No one else can make you a leader, no matter what title or salary they assign you; leadership comes from within.
So, yes, we need more women leaders inside organizations and state houses. But, and, more fundamentally, we need to recognize just how many women are already leading, in ways that our white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist culture devalues.
The woman who works retail may not strike you as a leader, but what if you knew the organizing she does in her church, and the effect it has on people’s lives? Plus, who’s to say she isn’t leading in her retail role? Is she looking for ways to develop fellow team members, and/or improve their ways of working?
Or consider the female manager whose ideas are behind all of her male VP’s successes, who gets no recognition. She’s leading — it’s just that few people see her leadership.
Finally, think of the freelance artist and mother who is a social justice activist and is transforming the city school her children attend. What “society” might see: A low-income woman who struggles to make ends meet. And yet, she may be transforming far more lives than the dude who wears a suit and sits in an office.
“We need more women leaders.” Yes, of course we do. Yes, of course I want more women leading in boardrooms and state houses and EVERYWHERE. And, I also want us to recognize — to see — all the ways in which women are already leading, in so many areas of our lives. I want us to see how the problem is, in part, with what we see, and what we value, not in whether women are in fact leading.
Let’s take some of the energy we put in trying to convince people to let women lead into showing people all the ways in which women already are.
Showing them? How?
By telling different stories. (You knew this was coming!!)
By using our platforms to shine a spotlight on women who are leading in every area of our lives — and by calling it leadership.
“Women are a mighty force.” Hell yeah we are. But, it’s one thing to say it. It’s another to show it, and to apply a frame that says: this is what it looks like to lead.
Who is a woman whose leadership is not being sufficiently seen?
How can you show it to us?
You are a mighty force -
Amanda
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