What Will It Take to Make A Woman President?: Conversations About Women, Leadership and Power by Marianne Schnall Read Free Book Online

saying is that women may not run enough, which is an observation I keep running into—there are a lot of studies that say that. And on the heels of Sheryl Sandberg’s book, do you think that in addition to the structural obstacles that there may be, that it is true thatwomen tend not to naturally want to pursue leadership positions, because of psychological obstacles?
    PM : No, I don’t think it’s a natural inclination for women not to want to lead or to go for leadership positions. I know very few women who will say, “I’m not naturally inclined to want to be a leader.” Some women might say, “I don’t want to be CEO. I don’t want that kind of job, that’s not where my values are,” I totally get that. But certainly the women I know, you show them that they can make a difference, and generally they’ll step up to that in some way or the other. But not all of us are going to be the ones who need to run. Some of us are going to be the ones who need to run the campaigns and run the media and make sure that there’s a fair and open pathway to success. But what women don’t know enough is that when women run, they win as often as men do. In spite of the obstacles—the structural obstacles that you referred to, and they are there—when they do decide, “I’m going to do this because it’s important,” they do win as often. What can we do about that? As consumers we can do one big thing: we can insist that the press cover a woman’s campaign in the same way as a man. And when they don’t, and we know they don’t—because there’s a new report out that’s just appalling, the difference in the way in which the campaigns are reported—we can insist, “I’m not reading that paper anymore, I’m not going to that website, I’m not going to listen to that newscast until you give that woman candidate the same kind of fair and accurate coverage.” So that’s one thing we can do. The second thing is to vote.
    MS : It is very true, though, that it’s a brutal thing to run these days, and you also brought up how the media can cover a woman candidate. When I interviewed Sheryl Sandberg, she talked about this whole likability correlation—that the more successful a woman leader is, the less she isliked. On the one side, you can’t be perceived as too soft or too emotional, but if you come across as too strong, too tough, too confident or powerful, you get criticized as well. What do you think about that conundrum?
    PM : Well, that is a conundrum, and I think at the core of that conundrum is that we haven’t worked out yet the very basic relationship between men and women and how men—really at a deep, deep emotional level—feel about strong and powerful women. I think you have to start with men, because they are really conflicted about this. There’s something about strong and powerful women that many men still find fearful. And it probably goes back to their mothers [ laughs] , so we’ve got some cultural things to unwind and unpack, there’s no question, and one of them really is that. The second thing on this likability factor—as media consumers with more power than we’ve ever had because we are actually controlling what we consume as media, in a different way—if we start to just push the bar, “lean in” as it were, and start to demand a more fair representation of, “Okay, is she bossy or is she just doing her job just like the guy standing next to her is doing?” I mean, poor Nancy Pelosi. When she led that healthcare reform . . . Now, why am I saying ‘poor Nancy Pelosi’? She’s hardly one to be pitied. She’s one of the strongest, most powerful, and most effective women leaders that I’ve ever had the experience of observing, and yet when she did exactly what she was voted into office to do, got legislation passed, she was attacked from every possible point of view. And generally, if you read through it, they were attacking her on a likability issue: She’s this. She’s