OU women take the lead in campus organizations, but still face professional challenges
In addition to the pay gap, there’s another distance that women in the working world might have to overcome: The jump from campus leadership to professional leadership.
Women hold less than 20 percent of top leadership jobs in the professional world, according to a 2013 study by the University of Denver. However, the majority of presidents in co-ed student organizations are female – on Ohio University’s Athens campus at least.
Excluding singularly male or female organizations, 55 percent of student groups registered with the Campus Involvement Center have the top leadership spot filled by a woman. Although the split is almost equal, leadership experiences sometimes differ between the sexes.
From the very beginning
It might be difficult for women to apply for leadership positions in the first place, said Susanne Dietzel, director of OU’s Women’s Center.
“We see a lot when women look at job applications, they say ‘I can do eight of the ten things that are required here, but not two, maybe I’m not qualified,’” she said. “Whereas for men, they are saying ‘oh, I can do two of the eight things, I’m totally qualified for this.’”
She added women often do a lot of “invisible work” for organizations, but don’t consider themselves for elected positions.
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The Women’s Center aims to cultivate female leadership through various programs, including the Margaret Boyd Scholars program that guides women from their freshman year onward.
Kelly Sheerer, a senior studying commercial photography and the president of the OU branch of College Republicans, said for the two years she was in the group prior to her elected position, she had only seen one woman on the executive team. Now the group has a female president and vice president.
“We have had people make comments about women being in charge of College Republicans, but it’s been great, I love it,” she said. “I didn’t have anybody to look up to in the club, female-wise, and we have a bunch of freshman girls, and one of them told me the other day, ‘oh, it’s so great having someone in charge I can try to be.’”
College Democrats also has a female president, Jenna Moore, and a woman has held the position for the past three years. Moore, a junior studying women’s and gender studies, said she sees a lot of opportunities for women to lead in student organizations.
One challenge she faced was dealing with a candidate for office who referred to the group’s male vice president rather than Moore. However, she said that these kinds of experiences are few and far between.
“Everybody does respect me and respect my authority,” she said.
Sheerer said she had a different experience as she was selected over the male president of the group to introduce Ohio Gov. John Kasich last year.
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Student Senate
Perhaps one of the most high-profile student leaders on campus, Student Senate President Megan Marzec, said looking at female leaders as abnormal can imply that a female having the ability to lead is abnormal.
Instead, the senior studying studio art said people should look at women in leadership roles in organizations as a sign that “women are fighting back, not that women need to stop fighting.”
“We have to accept and keep at the forefront of our minds that institutionalized sexism and institutionalized misogyny is preventing women from fulfilling leadership roles from the very day they are conceived as a female,” she said.
Marzec said her gender was a talking point every step of the way in her running for senate as a part of the Restart campaign, from the way she dressed during debates to the stances she took after her election.
“It became quite clear from the beginning of the campaign that I was taking more risk speaking politically as a woman than any man would be doing the same,” she said.
After Treasurer Carter Phillips resigned Sept. 17, Zainab Kandeh took his place, joining Marzec and Vice President Caitlyn McDaniel as the first all-female executive board in OU’s history.
Marzec said the view of this as an outstanding anomaly for senate is damaging, however.
“Gender is only implicated when addressing female leadership,” she said
Female leaders in mostly male-dominated fields
Women are still the minority in fields such as politics and business. For example, women currently comprise 18.5 percent of the seats in Congress and only 4.8 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women, a record high. Although statistics aren’t readily available for the amount of female leadership in engineering, roughly 13 percent of professionals in the field are women.
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Natasha Norris, the president of OU’s Society of Women Engineers, said the organization shows women coming into Russ College of Engineering that they’re not alone.
“Guys typically have more experience with technology coming in,” Norris said. “I’ve had men act like they’re better than me, and that was hard to deal with.”
Norris is a junior majoring in electrical engineering, one of the more male-dominated subfields of engineering. She recalled an experience where she was working on her first circuit. She initially felt behind, but caught up quickly.
“By the end, I was teaching (male students) how to do it,” she said.
Norris said that it’s been found that females are generally more detail-oriented than men adding that it’s the differences between men and women which makes the sexes working together really advantageous.
Courtney Sterrick, a senior studying chemical engineering and the president of the campus arm of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, said there has been consistent female leadership in the organization. Chemical engineering, as a discipline, is proportioned 60:40, favoring men, she said.
Sterrick said she hadn’t really felt like there were any obstacles to getting things accomplished in the group as a female leader. She added there were plenty of examples of female leadership in the speakers that the group brings in and in the professional world, for example the CEO of DuPont Engineering, Ellen Kullman.
Developing skills, growing networks
Liz Doyle, a senior studying business, founded Women in Business a year ago in order to attract women to the business field, provide professional development opportunities and create a network of women successfully leading in the professional world.
OU’s College of Business is roughly 70 percent male, Doyle said, with varying distributions in different fields such as accounting and finance. She added that the gender difference can make a difference when it comes to group projects.
“A lot of the time the attributes that are associated with leading are considered as being masculine,” she said. “If you are a woman in a group of five guys and you are being assertive and taking control and organizing the group, it can be perceived completely differently because of gender stereotypes.”
Doyle said that the gender difference is something the College of Business is looking to get over, but the problem is more institutional than campus specific. Doyle said she has been pleased with how the organization developed over the past year, adding that plenty of companies are contacting the group looking to connect with participants, including Frito-Lay and PepsiCo.
Women in Business aims to provide participants with professional development, including skills such as salary negotiation. In a study detailed in the book Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide, 57 percent of male MBA graduates that participated negotiated an offer where only 7 percent of females at the same education level entered that discussion.
“Developing that skill set … it’s only going to help you later,” she said.
@emilymbamforth
eb104010@ohio.edu
