Women’s Leadership at Princeton: Beyond the Numbers

The 2011 Women’s Leadership Report revealed a disturbing reality — in the “highly visible positions” of major student groups on University campus, women held fewer of the top spots since right after the first decade that the University began accepting women. The findings of this report ignited an effort across campus to try to understand why this was the case and how to reverse the trend.

The report discovered through numerous interviews that many issues were in play, not only at the University, but also across its peer institutions. Female students were consistently underselling themselves; women were active in organizations but chose less visible, behind the scene roles; other students were actively discouraging women from seeking the highest leadership positions, pressuring them “to run for vice president or social chair instead [of president] on the grounds that these posts were more suitable for women.”

Have we finally turned the proverbial corner in 2015 in terms of the newly elected officials of many of our campus’ most high-profile organizations? It might seem as though we have good reason to celebrate the shattering of our campus’ own glass ceiling. After all, the new USG president is a woman — as are the The Daily Princetonian’s editor-in-chief, The American Whig-Cliosophic Society’s president and four of the eleven eating clubs’ presidents.

But let’s not break out the champagne quite yet. It’s important to recognize these elections are immensely significant in the sense that women are taking the initiative to run for these positions and are furthermore winning. But it would be a huge mistake to consider the problem solved — because it isn’t. And proclaiming the issue to be over enormously hinders the chances of getting to the root of the problem and truly creating the cultural change needed to equalize leadership on campus and beyond.

Don’t get me wrong. I am proud of all the women who stepped forward into leadership roles on campus this year. It is an important and necessary step for achieving gender parity. But let us not forget that Ella Cheng became USG president in a run-off, after Will Gansa ran on a joke platform that garnered the most votes in the general election (though not the required majority). Ella is the first female president of USG since 2003. How is it possible that Princeton went more than a decade without a woman USG president?

And while it is progress that we now have more women in leadership positions at the eating clubs, Tiger Inn polled its members just this past November and 70% of the respondents did not believe that any female would stand much of a chance of winning a high officer position in the club. These gender stereotypes run deep among both male and female students. One election cycle won’t wash them away.

My guess is the 2011 report and its recommendations — such as the creation of the Women’s Mentorship Program and greater faculty awareness about both the issue and possible causes of this inequality — and the discussions that were sparked helped lead to our present statistics. I know the report’s findings made me personally reconsider why I was or was not interested in taking on certain responsibilities and titles on campus. Ultimately I do not know if I acted differently because of what I read and saw, but it definitely encouraged some serious introspection and discussions.

However, it is imperative to recognize that equal numbers do not necessarily illustrate equality, and certainly we have not dispelled all cultural biases just because there are more women leaders in one random year. It is not only mistaken to assume that no obstacles currently exist to female leadership on campus, but it is also dangerous.

If we assume we have reached gender parity, people won’t think about gender when electing leaders; it essentially becomes a non-issue. And this is certainly the goal. The most deserving students should be elected to these positions, regardless of their sex. But unless and until the changes have become ingrained in our culture, there is a huge risk of slipping back into greater inequality and losing these gains to both leadership equality and the cultural shifts that have been achieved thus far. On the other hand, when people identify gender parity as an issue, more people frequently reflect on the current situation and how it can be improved.

At the panel on women and eating clubs last week, Hap Cooper ’82, president of the TI graduate board, boasted about the great progress TI made this year, from its previous alleged gender problems to having a female president. His tone suggested that the recent election proved that the sexism that had seemed so prevalent just recently — at eating clubs or on campus at large — had completely reversed. The reality is not so simple. Sexism is rooted in our patriarchal society, not just at the University, but also around the world. While a female leader can have a huge impact on changing that culture and the election of a woman can imply that people are more accepting of women in positions of power and the effects their gender might have on their stewardship of the group, it does not guarantee that such a change has been internalized to signify true equality.

With this reality in mind, let’s take the University’s recent surge in women’s leadership for what it is: a step in the right direction, but not a reason to stop pushing for cultural change among both women and men on campus as well as for more female leaders on campus.

Marni Morse is a sophomore from Washington, D.C. She can be reached at mlmorse@princeton.edu.