Women for a Change: Closing the Leadership Gap

Abstract

In the fall of 2013, the first author (SS) attended the Association for Academic Psychiatry's annual meeting in Charleston, South Carolina. During a panel discussion on the second day, the issue of why there are so few women leaders in psychiatry did not simply emerge-it exploded, so much so that it was a challenge for the highly skilled facilitator of the discussion to move the conversation away from gender and into other areas of navigating a career as a psychiatric educator. At the workshops, conversations and questions invariably led back to this concern about the lack of women leadership in psychiatry.Women and leadership is a hot topic, not only in the sense of its public popularity, but also in the strong beliefs and contested opinions it elicits about why so few women hold leadership positions. In post-AAP conversations, we reflected on the genuine concern expressed by conference participants who were courageous enough to speak about a topic that often provokes visceral, and sometimes vitriolic, reactions. Our conversations led us to consider how the dialogue generated during the AAP conference on the topic of women and leadership in psychiatry has deep roots in our current social and cultural environment. We discussed how a North American post-feminist culture that places such a high value on individualism influences how we develop, promote, and retain women aspiring to assume and be successful in leadership roles. The lack of women in leadership roles is not unique to psychiatry. This article provides a brief overview of feminism, post-feminism, and individualism as a means of grounding the conversation. We also offer considerations on which leaders in departments of psychiatry may reflect as they work toward maximizing female talent in their settings. Feminism, Post-feminism, and IndividualismThere are many "feminists" and many different theories. Modern feminism, however, can be grouped into three waves: The first wave spanned the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century; the second wave occurred between the early 1960s and the late 1980s; and the third wave began in the early 1990s and continues today into post-feminism.The first wave of feminism emerged in the context of industrial society, liberal politics, and the movement to abolish slavery. Its goal was to create access and equal opportunities for women, with a focus primarily on suffrage but also on access to education and health care; the right to work, possess money, and own property; and women's right to themselves and their own bodies. First-wave feminists spent years in activism that can be traced back to the Middle Ages. Most people consider the first wave to have ended when women were granted the right to vote.Second-wave liberal feminism of the 1960s and 1970s emerged in the context of postwar Western welfare societies and the civil rights movement. The second wave focused on expanding equal opportunities for women within our existing social, economic, and political system. It was widely believed that our societal systems...

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