Expected roles hinder career goals

Langenhan is a fourth-year physiological science student and a
member of UCLA Bruin Belles Service Association.

By Jessica Langenhan

“Women’s leadership” is not a clearly defined
term. Perhaps this is due to the fact that it can have different
connotations for different people. To a father, women’s
leadership may mean buying his 8-year-old daughter a baseball mitt.
To a mother, women’s leadership may mean having the ability
to decide to stay at home and raise her children without the aid of
a day care center or a nanny. To a female economics major,
women’s leadership may be defined by the determination of how
to forge a path to employment at a Fortune 500 company.

But there is another reason that “women’s
leadership” does not have a clear, definitive definition: for
many, the subject is almost taboo, a concept that somehow gets
overlooked and lost in the shuffle of classes or work, family and
friends and social activities.

For example, at UCLA, female students attend lectures and
graduate with degrees in disciplines and fields that were dominated
by men in the not-so-distant past: the presence of female students
in chemistry, engineering and calculus classes is not even an issue
anymore.

But while women now have the opportunity to become experts in
fields that had previously been closed to them, it is still not
discussed how they are going to apply this information and these
skills in a practical manner in the “real world,” where
they are confronted with issues and problems beyond those of their
chosen career field.

For example, a female student may master the fundamentals of
being a world-renowned researcher, but she is never guided in how
to balance such a career with a husband, a house and children.
Likewise, a woman may develop and hone a reputable business acumen,
while never learning how to address a boardroom filled with male
colleagues. The fact that a female law student graduated at the top
of her class becomes meaningless when she has to worry about the
length of her skirt when entering a courtroom.

  Illustration by ZACH LOPEZ/Daily Bruin By fighting to
obtain the rights to education and job placement that had before
only been granted to men, women have been given the keys to many of
the doors that have been closed to them

. However, that education (including the education offered at
UCLA) still fails to teach women effective ways to become leaders
in their fields once they have passed through those doors.

Furthermore, the prevailing belief seems to be that a woman
cannot become a leader while maintaining her ideal lifestyle. While
men can be successful in their careers, have a social life full of
hobbies and friends, and still have a house and children, it is
generally felt that women have to choose between certain facets of
their lives ““ that they cannot be strong career-minded women
if they also want a family and a social life.

In other words, women are constantly faced with the
“fact” that they will have to sacrifice some aspect of
their life.

Perhaps the partner in the law firm and the investment banker
shouldn’t have children, because they will only spend all
their time with a nanny. Or the female medical student should
concentrate on a specialization not because she enjoys it or is
skilled in that area, but because it will allow her to work
“normal” hours that match her husband’s schedule.
The concept of women’s leadership can become trivialized in
this sense.

But why should a woman, in order to develop into a leader, be
expected to surrender other valued aspects of her life, especially
when men are usually not confronted with such a dilemma?

On the other hand, it is usually assumed that such issues will
interfere with a woman’s ability to rise up as a leader in a
specific field: perhaps she will be too worried about her children
in day care to focus on other matters. This seems to be one of the
factors contributing to our current failure to have a woman lead
the U.S government.

But we cannot let the idea of women’s leadership become
trivialized. Instead, we must focus on these issues and learn how
to handle them when they arise. We must observe what women before
us have done and learn from their examples and their mistakes. In
other words, we must take matters into our own hands and fill in
where the educational system has failed us.

Colleges such as UCLA may provide us with the skills and
knowledge necessary for advancement and success in a particular
subject-area or field, but they cannot claim to have shown us how
to thrive in a world where men and women are still not viewed as
equals. Because until men are forced to juggle a career around
day-care schedules and planning family dinners, there will exist a
separation between men and women and between the types of lives
they are able to lead.

And this is where women’s leadership has significance for
me. By focusing on the idea that women’s leadership is a
laudable and necessary and achievable goal, perhaps we can find a
better way to balance our lives so that we do not always feel
compelled to sacrifice ““ so that we do not always feel that
men have gotten the better side of the bargain.

Such issues may not seem important now, because we are still in
the safe microcosm of UCLA, where the primary concern is simply
obtaining those skills that will look impressive on resumes and
graduate school applications.

But we will not be students forever: eventually, we will have to
emerge into the real world, where we will be confronted with these
very issues.

And men are not immune to the problems. Don’t most of you
have mothers, sisters, girlfriends, fiancees or wives, whose lives
are closely intertwined with yours? We may have gotten the vote,
but feminism is far from over and the challenges it faces continue
to affect everyone.

So begin to face these issues now. I invite you to UCLA’s
Fifth Annual Women’s Leadership Conference, presented by the
Bruin Belles Service Association, on Saturday, April 7, in Ackerman
Grand Ballroom, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The conference, featuring
Jamie Lee Curtis, is free and open to the public, and lunch will be
provided. For more information, visit the Women’s Leadership
Conference Web site at www.come.to/uclawlc.