Lead like a girl

A friend of mine and I were discussing the findings of the committee the other day. She noted that it didn’t take a full study to know that we need to value things other than executive positions, and she joked that one reason is sufficient for wanting such a position: “Because men do!” The people who fill the positions originally noted in the committee’s rubric must be assertive and persuasive, qualities that are certainly not limited to men but are definitely present in our society’s stock definition of “masculine.” We have a tendency to overlook involvement that requires nurturing and organizational skills, probably because those traits are generally assumed to be “feminine.”

I do, however, understand that the basis for looking into positions historically held by men is that these are opportunities that were once only available to men. As the study said, when these positions first opened, the women who blazed the trail jumped at the new opportunity to show that they were capable — but now it seems from the numbers that women have begun to shy away over the years. The study concluded that we need to break the stereotypes of what women can do and what men can do, but to do that we need to add an appreciation of femininity to our culture.

Whether or not men and women are psychologically different is a point of contention in these types of discussions. We don’t want to open the door to people saying that women are inherently less capable, but we need to be cautious about confusing equality with sameness. Sometimes, in our efforts to empower women, we’ve focused on the argument that women can be like men. That is part of what we want to say — that women can do the things that were once reserved for men — but an unfortunate side effect of this sentiment is that classically feminine traits and roles are disparaged. Being submissive to the point of not wanting to disagree when you rightly should is a problem, but not starting a knockdown drag out fight in precept because you’re respectful of other people is not. Doing kind things for people just because you think you need to earn their affection is bad, but baking cookies for your office because your cookies are delicious is not.

Even as we realize that women’s role here may be different instead of inferior, the idea still persists that the possessing of traits which align with our social view of femininity — more than just physiological femaleness — is what makes someone unfit for a male-dominated position. When people (both men and women) ask me what I do at school, after I tell them that I’m a mechanical engineer, the common response is, “You don’t look like an engineer.” Even people who might not be too perturbed by a female engineer puzzle at one who looks put together, has a closet full of sundresses, drinks tea, paints her nails, reads Nora Roberts and watches Lifetime original movies. In some areas it’s not being a woman that’s the issue at all — it’s being “feminine.”

Some roles are valued above others because they’re prestigious, old and, up until recently, reserved only for the good ol’ boys. This sort of thinking points to the fact that as a society, we still often measure what women should want by what men do want. I completely agree with the committee’s statement that if we want to make women feel welcome here we need to retool our idea of leadership, and I think that we also need to reassess the value we put on desiring to be in charge. We need to be careful not to change the voice that tells women “you can’t do what men do” so much that it turns into “you must do what men do.”

Margaret Thatcher once said, “The woman’s mission is not to enhance the masculine spirit, but to express the feminine; hers is not to preserve a man-made world, but to create a human world by the infusion of the feminine element into all of its activities.” It’s worth continuing to see how the roles of men and women on this campus evolve through the years, but we need to be conscious of the feminine and the masculine equally to give everyone a chance to participate as they please.

Sophia LeMaire is a mechanical engineering major from Longmeadow, Mass. She can be reached at slemaire@princeton.edu.