Moving Beyond Firsts

FOR years women argued for opportunity. Corporate Harvard, like other elite institutions, was run by white men; how could it pretend to care about diversity and respect different voices if it was run by only one group?

For women, this year, the final barriers have been broken. Now, at the highest levels, women are running the Harvard administration. In February Judith Hope became the first woman member of the Corporation. Sally Zeckhauser was appointed vice president for administration last year, the first woman to hold a top Mass Hall post. Women now hold 58 percent of the executive, administrative and managerial slots.

Now is the time to reexamine why we argued for women appointments: Is that all we really wanted, a woman in power? Or was it something more, a way to challenge how the system is run? Did it matter which women were appointed? Do women have to conform to the conservatism of the Corporation members, as Republican activist Hope does, or be as hardened to bottom-line corporatism as Zeckhauser, former head of Harvard Real Estate, has been?

Women's admission into the inner circles is a sign that the administration is becoming more sensitive. Women leaders must take advantage of this to encourage reforms that further open decision-making and widen the agenda. Their voice in top meetings is new to their male co-workers-what they raise as women's issues may get a more willing reception now than at any other time.

A study of Congressional initiatives about women found the presence of women politicians pushed issues beyond discussion into tangible reforms. According to another study, an overwhelming majority of male leaders said the presence of female leadership means that they will be more likely to consider how legislation affects women.

Still, women at the top resist taking up women's issues, wanting to avoid being typed as single-issue advocates, or emphasizing one aspect of self, gender, over other aspects, such as career.

"I do not see myself as a champion of women's causes," Zeckhauser said, but she senses "a very special perspective" gained from her experiences as a working mother.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor insisted that her gender would not impact her decisions. "I think the important fact about my appointment is not that I will decide cases as a woman, but that I am a woman who will get to decide cases." Nonetheless, since her appointment the court has become remarkably more supportive of sex discrimination complaints, according to a study of cases decided before and after O'Connor's appointment.

No matter how women minimize the impact of gender on their leadership, womanhood is a definitive factor on the job. As pathfinders, the appointees inevitably become role models. When Zeckhauser speaks before groups of employees, "what people resonate most to is what it's like to be a woman in this job, the fact that it is doable. I face a lot of the same problems other women do in jobs around the university as working women."

At a recent Radcliffe conference, Rutgers professor Ruth Mandel posed the dilemma of women who used to protest the hierarchy as "outsiders" now becoming "insiders"--torn between playing power games or infusing the system with new perspectives from their own lives and women's past.

But the women's administrative leadership at Harvard is groomed in the insider tradition. Rather than hiring from the outside, the University has moved women up its own corporate ladder.

This may make it unrealistic to expect top appointees to spearhead a women's agenda. By the time women reach the top, they may have become so inured to the power games required to succeed that any uniqueness may have been suppressed long ago.

"There is fear that women who play men's games will grow indistinguishable from male power seekers, that women who win entry and learn how to survive in male institutions will not care about social change to benefit other women or to transform the society's priorities," Mandel said.

But women leaders cannot avoid gaining different perspectives on their way to the top, balancing a career with raising children, joining women's groups, experiencing safety threats, harrassment, or discrimination. "Even if she has spent her days rejecting the social imperatives of her gender identity...she will have experienced life as a female," said Mandel.

For Zeckhauser the issue of day-care provides a commonality between her and other female workers; as the University offfical responsibility for land usage, she is in a position to get more day care facilities built.

If women who command the respect of men don't raise relevant issues, no one with a similar chance for success will. If change is to be enacted within the system, women leaders, sensitized to certain issues, must take up the causes, not just for themselves but for reforms that can improve the workplace for all.