Leaning in… by taking a stand, or the socio-historical preconditions for women’s leaderliness

Abstract

Beginning with a review of some widely-circulated studies of social barriers inhibiting women’s cultivation of the self-esteem and confidence upon which leadership depends, the heart of this essay intentionally resembles intergenerational storytelling. This self-conscious daughterly narrative draws attention to the intersectional factors, and puts into historical perspective, a working-class mother’s striving in the 1970s and 1980s to achieve authorised presence as a leader. A series of vignettes chronicling her standing up with and for others discloses a structural explanation for the transformation in women’s sense of self permitting a perceptible acceleration in the general emergence of women leaders in the US context during the last quarter of the twentieth century.