Leadership Archives

Is U.S. Foreign Policy Feminist?

This is a year of milestones for women: the 25th Anniversary of the Beijing Conference on Women, the 20th Anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, and the 100th Anniversary of women’s suffrage in the United States. In this context, Our Secure Future commissioned a poll of 1,500 registered voters in the U.S. to get a sense of how they view foreign policy decision-makers, whether they see themselves represented in that arena, and whether they consider themselves to be a feminist. The results illuminate some thinking on these issues and are useful to decision-makers and advocates alike as they develop and debate foreign and national security policy.

According to the poll, almost 60 percent of respondents do NOT think that those who have made U.S. foreign policy and national security decisions over the last decade generally share their beliefs and interests. 22 percent were unsure. Here are some more details:

There was a gap between women (55%) and men (64%).
There was a wider gap between Democrats (50%) and Republicans (67%)/Independents (64%).
There was an even wider gap between those who frequently watch MSNBC (44%) and Fox News (68%).
Surprisingly, a greater percentage of white respondents (62%) do not feel represented in U.S. foreign policy and national security institutions than black (49%) or Hispanic (51%) respondents.

The same poll showed that less than half (48%) of those surveyed think that women are sufficiently represented in the U.S. government when it comes to making decisions about foreign policy and national security. Additional details:

The largest gap was based on political party affiliation with 10 percent of Democrats and 73 percent of Republicans believing that women are sufficiently represented. Independents were split (42% yes/41% no)
There was also a gap between women (35%) and men (44%).
The widest gap was between those who frequently watch MSNBC (5%) and Fox News (74%).

The survey also found that party affiliation and age were affiliated with whether a respondent thinks of her/himself as a “feminist”.

59 percent of Democrats said they consider themselves a feminist (62% for frequent MSNBC viewers), but just 7 percent of Republicans and frequent Fox News viewers did.
50 percent of 18-34 year-olds said “yes” to the feminist label while 29 percent of those over 65 years did.
Black (47%) and Hispanic (49%) respondents were more likely to think of themselves as feminists than white ones (30%).

This information — while preliminary — can help guide discussions and provide background for work being done to advance policy proposals around Women, Peace and Security, and a more inclusive foreign policy.

COVID-19 Demands We Rethink Gender Roles

Analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic is bringing the role of gender in society sharply into focus. As we look at the impact of the pandemic in subjects as diverse as political leadership, violence in the home, caregiving and what constitutes “essential” work, we are confronting the role that gender plays across the world. As a point of reference, gender is the socially defined set of roles, rights, responsibilities, entitlements, and obligations of females and males in societies. While many gender norms have shifted, these norms still inform our actions and roles every day. These norms translate into women being viewed primarily as caregivers, while men are viewed as leaders. In most of our societies, we see family violence is a private matter, but COVID-19 is bringing these issues to the forefront as our public and private lives have become more intertwined.

We’re able to discuss gender differently during this global crisis because gender impacts are being discussed in “real time”—as they are happening—rather than analyzed months or years after the fact. Advocates and practitioners have been working to include this type of gender analysis for years but topics like foreign policy, crisis response, and trade have traditionally—and wrongly—been seen as gender blind or gender neutral. This new focus on real-time analysis of gender impacts provides us an opportunity to create lasting change.

Women’s Unseen, Essential Role in Labor

According to a recent New York Times article, one in three jobs held by women has been designated as essential, and nonwhite women are more likely to be doing essential jobs than anyone else. These women are core to a part of the labor force which keeps the country running and takes care of those most in need, pandemic or not. In health care, 77% of essential workers are women and in essential retail, 53% are women. According to the New York Times, 83% of those in health care jobs paying under $30,000 are women. We know that women are paid less than men, and this is more pronounced for women of color. In the U.S., women overall earn 81 cents for every dollar a white man earns, while African American, Hispanic and Native American women earn 75 cents. We must use this window to address the twin issues of pay disparity and how we value certain jobs and types of work.

Successful Women’s Leadership During Catastrophe

Women leaders like Prime Minister Jacinda Arden of New Zealand, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, and President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan are taking bold action to stem the impact of COVID-19. They are praised as “voices of reason” for their clear and effective communication, decisiveness and empathy in the face of this pandemic. We need more leaders like them. As of January 2020, women serve as heads of state in only 10 out of 152 countries (6.6%) and women serve as heads of government in 12 out of 193 countries (6.2%). Women hold about 25% of the seats in parliaments globally and 24% of those in the U.S. Congress. This is a time to rethink the way we view leadership and the traits we value in leaders. These women demonstrate that a leader should be both decisive and empathetic.

Domestic Violence Spikes Amid the Pandemic

With 90 countries in lockdown because of COVID-19, billions of people are now sheltering at home. While this has kept many people safe from the virus, it has put many women at risk of violent behavior behind closed doors. Stay-at-home orders put those in violent relationships in close proximity of their abusers, with little ability to leave home or reach out for help. In Argentina, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the U.S., sharp spikes in the incidence of domestic violence and concurrent heightened demand for emergency shelter have been raised by government authorities, women’s rights activists and civil society organizations. It is critical that countries make the prevention and redress of gender-based violence a key part of national response plans.

Shelter-at-Home Highlights Need for Caregiving Infrastructure

Finally, COVID-19 has laid bare the reality that most caregiving is still done by women. Even when both parents work full-time, women do the majority of the childcare and housework. Recent calls to build an infrastructure of care in the U.S. have gone unanswered. But now, with schools closed and large numbers of family members at home, or when people with school-aged kids or dependent parents have to go to work, it is clearer how much care and household work is needed and who does that work. Before COVID-19, many families relied on others (often women) to formally or informally care for children or other dependents, clean their homes or cook meals. Now, many of those workers are unable to continue these roles. Once again, it is important that organizations and governments recognize that many workers have a full-time job outside the office.

Make no mistake, we are facing a global crisis. But, we can use this as an opportunity to reimagine a different future, one that values gender equality, women’s participation and women’s leadership. Women must be part of COVID-19 response and recovery planning and decision making. We must value work the unseen work done by women. We must use every tool possible to restructure caregiving systems and address the causes of domestic violence. We can do this, using everyone’s talent, skill and experience to inform our choices.

Your legacy: an open letter to Nancy Pelosi

Dear Speaker of the House-To-Be Pelosi,

Now that Democrats have taken back the House of Representatives and you are likely to hold the gavel as Speaker of the House, I urge you to take this opportunity to create a pool of women from which the NEXT woman Speaker of the House will be elected.

I appreciate your leadership, your legislative and political skills. You are a masterful strategist. You were instrumental in passing the Affordable Care Act in 2010, protecting it over the last two years and ensuring that Democratic candidates for the House had a platform to use in their election campaigns around affordable health care. I support you running to be Speaker once again, but I will be exceedingly disappointed if you do not use the opportunity to nurture and encourage other women leaders. It is your duty.

In January, there will be record number of women serving in the House: young women and older women, Christian and Muslim women, African American and Native American women, incumbents and newcomers. It is your responsibility to teach them what you know and give them the opportunity to lead. Formally or informally, mentor them. Strengthen the network of women legislators and encourage them to learn from and support each other. This work will increase the legislators’ ability to serve and help them (and you) deliver on your policy agenda.

While organizations and individuals have stepped up this year to recruit, train and support women running for office, you are uniquely qualified to foster women’s leadership within the House. I implore you to use your position, influence and experience. It could be your greatest legacy.

5 Ways to Support Today’s Young Women Leaders

Young women aren’t future women leaders. They are women leaders. Period.

Last month, I participated in two events that drove home that point. First, I spoke at the kick-off event for Gender Balance Consulting, a student-led organization at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School founded to increase its clients’ commitment to gender equality. Second, I moderated a panel on pathways to leadership for young women, cosponsored by the Girls Scouts of the Nation’s Capital, American University’s School of Public Affairs, and my firm, Smash Strategies.

The young women involved in these events are engaged across diverse issues: women’s economic participation, anti-bullying, building leadership. We need their voices in every place where decisions are made. While 56 percent of college students are women, only 40 percent of colleges have women student body presidents. Running for student government is important because those who do are 11 percent more likely to run for political office. (And, forty percent of women currently in Congress were involved in student government.)

We need to value and validate the leadership of these young women and support their work. Here are five ways we can play a role in their success:

1. “If you can’t see it, you can’t be it.” We all know this mantra. Talent and skill matter but so does seeing someone like you as a diplomat, a scientist, a lawyer, a doctor, fill-in-the-blank. Young women need diverse role models, and we need to be accessible to them and tell our stories. Women can learn from men, but men can’t give advice on navigating the workplace (or the world) as a woman. The panel on young women’s leadership featured such a group of speakers. One panelist discussed her challenges being an African-American woman and a corrections officer, another around being a working mom.
2. It’s not only about doing the job well, it’s about claiming credit. Women often don’t get the credit or the visibility as experts we deserve. Young women aren’t always encouraged to promote themselves and don’t hear that many women’s public voices. For example, men dominate the Sunday morning talk shows, filling eight of the 10 most frequent guest seats. And, less than 15 percent of the millions of quotes shared every day are by women and girls. This needs to change. We must encourage young women to write blogs and books, place them as speakers on panels, book them for media appearances, and nominate them for awards. Exposure is a validator.
3. Networks are important to success. Building a network starts from a young age (the school you attended, your sports team). Knowing a lot of people isn’t enough. We can help young women expand their networks by inviting them to events as our guests, by introducing them to others who can open doors, give feedback on ideas, and help find someone to build their skill set. We can coach them on how to ask for advice from others.
4. Confidence can be learned. In the Confidence Code, Katty Kay and Claire Shipman write about the confidence gap: women don’t consider themselves as ready for promotions as men do, predict they’ll do worse on tests, and overall underestimate their abilities. But, research demonstrates that acting confident can build that skill. Getting in the game makes a difference. We need to give constructive feedback to young women and give them opportunities to practice confident behavior. And, we should complement young women for their smarts and accomplishments, not just their looks.
5. We need to engage young men. As young women build their leadership portfolio, it’s important to engage other women and men. The work to empower women can’t be seen as a “zero-sum” game; it must expand opportunity for everyone. Men were about 20 percent of the audience at the Wharton School event, which helps to bring men into the conversation about the need for diversity in business leadership. We can encourage young women to engage young men, but we can do so as well.

Young women are coming into their own as leaders — not only of specific projects and companies — but of a culture that brings out the best in everyone. Together we can expand their reach and propel them further and faster. Let’s do it.

StartUps: Embedding a Focus on Gender From Day One

Businesses ignore women — and a focus on gender — at their peril. Everyone from startup founders to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies needs to promote women’s leadership, create safe and fair workplaces, support and engage women in the community, and ensure that their products and services reflect the differential experiences, and needs, of women and men.

When women’s participation in the labor force increases, GDP rises. When women start businesses, communities flourish. When companies have more gender diversity at the top, they are 21 percent more likely to experience above-average profits.

Startups founded by women are more profitable. According to the Vinetta Project, startups founded by women are 20 percent more likely to be revenue generating and there is a 35 percent higher return on investment (ROI) when financing a company founded by women.

Founding teams that include a woman outperform their all-male peers by 63 percent, according to First Round Capital,comparing performance data in their portfolio over a 10 year period. Women founders create companies targeted at new market niches. Many of the most innovative and promising women-led startups focus on how to manage and ease the time burdens women face. For example, in 2014, Kate Ryder founded Maven Clinic, an online platform connecting consumers with doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals with appointments in real time and a starting price of $18.

I spoke recently on a panel, “Women=Change,” held during DC Startup Week, a festival of programming for founders and entrepreneurs. The standing-room session addressed how focusing on women and gender can increase profitability and sustainability as well as how to concretely build this approach into business planning and development.

Four of my key takeaways:

Good news: investors are looking to invest more in women-led companies. In 2017, only two percent of venture funding went to women-led startups and ventures. That needs to change. But, more funds are investing in companies led by diverse founders. The Helm plans to only invest in women-led companies, and Backstage Capital announced a $36 million fund investing exclusively in companies led by black women founders.
Building a strong ecosystem is essential. Founders and new ventures need what is called an “ecosystem”: a supportive culture, enabling policies and laws, availability of financial and human capital, venture-friendly markets for products, and a range of institutional and infrastructural supports. In order to create such an ecosystem, government, business, financial institutions, investors and mentors must work together. More good news: there are groups bringing together these key actors, such as BEACON DC, a community-led campaign to make Washington, DC the most influential and supportive city for women entrepreneurs in the United States.
Have tough conversations early. If you have issues with people assuming your male co-founder is in charge, or one of your male colleagues takes credit for your ideas, have that uncomfortable conversation early (and often). Discuss this with your co-founder (or employee) to ensure your leadership role is acknowledged. Be clear about who will represent the firm at conferences, and meetings, and how those presentations will be structured.
Simple actions create a more inclusive culture. Rethink your recruitment and selection process. Job descriptions can be unintentionally biased by using phrases that emphasize an aggressive business culture. Use gender neutral titles, check the use of pronouns, and emphasize your commitment to diversity of all kinds. Hire people whose skill sets complement yours. Post jobs in multiple forums. Commit to the slate of candidates you interview being gender-balanced.

If you can embed this approach into your firm’s culture from day one, you are building for growth and sustainability. These actions can take time and thought, but in the end, will save you from playing catch up.

From Mongolia to Washington, DC: Engaging Emerging Young Leaders

People-to-people exchanges are more important than ever before in these times of global transition and turbulence. They are a proven public diplomacy tool. Studies show that exposure to other cultures fosters understanding, creativity and innovation. Exchanges help develop and deepen people-to-people ties and connections across political systems, cultures and countries. They create personal bonds and promote understanding, and they provide an opportunity to meet each other face-to-face, rather than through the lens of media reporting or governmental biases.

The US-Asia Institute (USAI) has almost 40 years of experience conducting people-to-people exchanges. USAI founders were part of the American contingent that traveled with Deng Xiaoping on his historic visit to the United States in January, 1979. Since then, USAI has organized and participated in hundreds of exchanges between the U.S. and China, Japan, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia.

So it was natural fit for USAI to initiate a five-year leadership and democracy training program for emerging Mongolian leaders and elected officials. The purpose of this new initiative, the IMPACT Leadership Exchange & Training programs, is to empower participants with skills and knowledge to engage in and take on leadership roles in democratic and electoral processes, as well as civil society, through a series of exchanges featuring training workshops in Washington, D.C. and Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

For participants, exchanges are an opportunity to learn new skills and develop networks of experts and colleagues to call on for advice, support and friendship when they return home. For Americans, the exchanges give us a glimpse of another culture and help us identify similarities as well as differences in our systems and structures. For U.S. policy makers, they introduce us to people who will most certainly lead their country in the future.

The IMPACT program was developed by USAI in collaboration with the Her Excellency Battsetseg Shagdar, Non-Staff Advisor to the President of Mongolia, who set out to create a program to cultivate the traditions of participating in and the knowledge about democratic governance in Mongolia’s young democracy of only 28 years.

The result is an intense IMPACT training schedule. USAI will organize and host seven delegations a year. Once a year, a delegation led by the USAI will travel to Ulaanbaatar to train 100 emerging women leaders.

In July, the USAI received the inaugural cohort of nine Mongolian emerging leaders. The delegation participated in a Government 101 briefing to learn about the U.S. system, engaged with young American leaders, participated in an interactive discussion on the rights and responsibilities of citizens in a democracy, heard from a panel on the role of political parties in the U.S., and met with Representatives Dina Titus and Don Young, Co-Chairs of the Congressional Caucus on Mongolia, and Representative Peter Roskam, Co-Chair of the House Democracy Partnership.

The group also toured the Capitol, the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court and received in-depth briefings on the history of the U.S. Congress, the role of the three branches of government and the balance of power between them, the U.S. judicial system, and election processes.

They also participated in some hands-on leadership development. Delegates spent an afternoon strategizing about skills they need to develop as effective leaders. The group was focused on how to motivate others and encourage them to participate in public life. We discussed the importance of having a vision to guide work and help people see how they fit into a larger picture. Communication skills were also important, and most of the group members (like most people everywhere) wanted to sharpen public speaking skills. At the same time, group members focused on how to effectively communicate their own personal vision, so their audiences are able understand the underlying issues and goals behind that vision.

After an intense event, it’s easy to move on to what’s next. But, it’s also an opportunity to reflect on lessons learned and takeaways. Here are some of ours:

Exchanges have exponential impact: Delegates reported that they intend to “pay it forward” by taking what they learned during their IMPACT training about becoming a leader, speaking in public and working with the media to better communicate with the public back to their colleagues in Mongolia. Some delegates also expressed a wish to create a nonprofit focused on grassroots organizing to help get out the vote during elections.

Exchanges are a forum for shared learning: Globally, we all face complex challenges to growth and stability, whether addressing job creation, political empowerment, or the development of important government services. Exchanges are a two-way street. While the Mongolian delegation learned from the Americans they met, we also learned about Mongolia, its particular structure, and its unique challenges. This experience of engaging with others gives us all a sense of a shared humanity and that we can — and must — learn from each other.

Exchanges build a commitment to shared values: Democracy works best when we have leaders with vision, foresight and the ability to bring others along with them. These types of exchanges help build those leadership skills, and an understanding that we are all in this together.

These takeaways demonstrate why people-to-people exchanges are a valuable public diplomacy tool and important to USAI’s mission to create understanding between the people and governments of the U.S. and those of Asian nations. Though this was the first IMPACT delegation, we hope that it will in fact have a lasting IMPACT by strengthening democratic engagement in Mongolia.