How Gender, Ethnicity Affect Leadership

“Leadership is not gender or ethnicity neutral,” stated Dr. Suzanne Oronato, associate dean of students at Georgia's Agnes Scott College, one of about 45 remaining women's colleges. Through research for her dissertation, she found leadership neutrality is really an oxymoron. If leadership is “a socially constructed paradigm shaped by the values and experiences of our society,” said Oronato, then “development of an individual's leadership identity is impacted by this context.” This concept is key to the goal of getting more women of color into campus leadership. She reported her research results at the NASPA conference for student affairs leaders in Orlando in March. Oronato interviewed a select group of 11 Hispanic, female student leaders attending a four-year state school serving Hispanics in the southeastern United States. They were native to Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Two were freshmen, and three each were sophomores, juniors and seniors. Questions were semi-structured. Each woman did two interviews of 60–90 minutes each and a focus group. The data revealed three levels of involvement: students just starting to get into leadership, a few who had led some activities and leaders in sororities or student government. From her research came five major topics: Encouraging relationships. This describes the meaningful ways significant people in the students’ lives—such as supporters in the family, mentors and peers—affected their identity development. Meaningful experiences. Meaningful experiences were key to their leadership identity and showed how joining in activities, programs and groups influenced them. Experiences were of three types: Participation (being a part of something); Contemplation (reflecting on experiences), and Effect (how these experiences changed the students’ view of leadership). At first, students saw leaders as those who take charge and become the boss. This morphed into leaders with vision, who get others involved and share the experience. Those seeking to improve the status of women of color need to provide not only opportunities for leadership, but also the time and space for them to have conversations to understand what they've learned. Self-development. Three themes also arose from this topic, which relates to personal growth and development: knowledge of self, a desire to become “the best me I can be” and self-competency. To gain self-knowledge, students embraced multiple experiences. They met people, joined organizations and discovered who they were as women and what they wanted to do. Some found they needed to step away from the expectations of friends and family, who felt their activities were an inappropriate use of their time. Being the best was having an attitude of “These are the best years and I want to be part of it.” Under self-competency, a student spoke of her experience as a peer advisor: “I had to learn to be diplomatic in dealing with people. I had to use tact in dealing with parents.” Role of gender. Because students internalized messages from people, society and gender role expectations, gender played a very important part. This topic included three themes: gender roles, strength and support of women, and building on progress. Gender roles revealed conflicting messages. Strong women were called “bitches” or “feminazi,” while strong men were seen as “just being a boss.” While the women students saw themselves as movers and shakers, they saw men at the top telling people what to do and women concerned only about the details of how to make it happen. These women relied on each other and those they saw as strong leaders, such as sorority leaders, faculty and administrators. Impact of ethnicity. Three themes in this topic are being a majority/minority, using leadership to help people of a particular ethnicity, and cultural expectations. Students found that attending a Hispanic serving school was a double-edge sword. While they got support from some groups, traditionally a Hispanic woman takes care of the home and leaves all else behind. Family was often a deterrent to the women getting involved in campus leadership. Families asked, “Why do this when you need to get married and have babies?” Cuban women reported feeling more empowered than their Puerto Rican or Dominican Republic counterparts. Students resolved some of this conflict by trying to make a difference in the lives of the Latina population. Others sought to help young girls in high school or abroad. Oronato researched students at a Hispanic-serving school in the southeastern United States. Replicating her research with other groups and at other schools would allow its implications to be generalized. To improve leadership opportunities for women of color, Oronato suggested schools: Develop leadership identity based on relationships and experiences. Understand that gender expectations pose particular challenges for women student leaders. Develop meaningful ways to integrate gender into leadership identity. Understand the impact of a minority serving school. Expand the understanding of the role of power. Realize that leadership is not neutral concerning gender, race or ethnicity. Developing an identity as a leader is a journey. It progresses from being a follower who evolves from seeing leader as boss to finally becoming a leader who brings people together to accomplish a goal. Contact: Sonorato@agnesscott.edu or 404.471.6075