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A Woman’s Work
In helping women break through corporate barriers, Sheila Wellington's job is never done
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Business New Haven
10/9/1995
By: BNH
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Although best known locally for the six years she spent as secretary of Yale University, Sheila W. Wellington now plays on a national stage as president of Catalyst, a 30-year-old not-for-profit research and advisory organization on women's private sector leadership. She was back in town September 29 for a women's business conference at Quinnipiac College, where BNH caught up with her.
Are barriers to women in professional life changing?
It is becoming slightly easier for women, but we have a long way to go. Women make up 47 percent of the workforce, and they're not leaving it. Women are entering graduate education to prepare themselves for careers in unprecedented numbers. More than 40 percent of law students are females. Women get more than half of the bachelor's degrees, more than half the master's degrees, more than half of the accounting degrees and roughly a third of the MBAs. So you have an extraordinary number of women preparing themselves seriously for careers. The change is that smart corporate leadership is becoming increasingly aware of the size of this talent pool, and they want to take advantage of it. Our focus is really out of the pulpit and into the trenches; it's making change happen because outstanding corporate leaders want to make changes. When they do, others will follow. In many cases, they really need practical, hands-on analysis about what's going on and how they can do things better.
Why did you choose Catalyst?
I was fortunate in having decided to move to New York to follow my husband [Harold Wellington is dean of the New York University School of Law]. I was surprised to find that I had a choice of interesting and good job [choices]. I decided on Catalyst for a number of reasons. My generation, which entered the workforce in the late 1960s, believed that the issue of women's advancement in the workforce was primarily one of access. I also have been in a number of jobs and a number of community activities [as] the first woman occupying this or that slot. [But] the pressures of balancing demanding jobs and family life had left me uninvolved personally in activities of advancing women. I felt that if I was going to pay my dues, this was the opportunity. It also would afford me the opportunity to learn about corporations and professional firms about which I did not know very much, but which I recognized was an important part of American life. Therefore, it would give me a real chance to learn, which excited me. I had heard of Catalyst, and I felt that it was a good organization, and I wanted it to flourish. So I took the job.
Tell us about the research Catalyst undertakes, and the kind of advising it does.
Catalyst does national research on issues of women in management and corporate and professional women in America. We will study issues of women on corporate boards - what the pathways are, the impact, the trends. We'll study of women in engineering. We have a study coming out on flexible work arrangements, which are increasingly important for balancing family and work life. We have a staff of about 20 researchers. The research that we do is applied research of a high order. We also do confidential environmental scans for major corporations and professional firms, identifying what the issues are for advancing women to leadership in those firms and laying out in a report action steps and working with corporations and firms to make change to enable them to take advantage of women's talent. We also have a major corporate board placement service and are currently working on 15 corporate board searches and 15 companies who wish to place women on their boards.
What have you learned that has surprised you the most?
The persistence of the myths and stereotypes about women's leadership capacity.
Is it a stereotype that female managers are more risk-averse than males?
It's more complicated than that. Women at managerial levels frequently find themselves bearing the burden of the entire gender. Lots of men have made mistakes, and you just say, 'He made a mistake.' [But a woman] is frequently viewed not as an individual but as representative of a whole class. So there tends to be feeling of 'We tried a woman and it didn't work out, so it shows that women can't do this or that job.' That climate is inhibiting to women. There are lots of cues [women] get, frequently unconsciously, from males in management that would tend to make women super-cautious, because if they make a mistake, they frequently pay for it heavily.
Are there differences between male and female leadership styles, or is that a myth?
I find this whole notion of a female leadership style both wrongheaded and regrettable. I don't think we know a tenth enough about what motivates people to be what they are, whether it's genetics or environment. If there's supposed to be a feminine leadership style, what it means is stereotyping. And ultimately all stereotypes are destructive for all people - men, women, blacks, Caucasians. Stereotyping women's leadership style has no basis in science, no basis in fact, and is ultimately is destructive. Women should be free to adopt whatever style works for them in a circumstance.
How would you describe your own leadership style?
You know, one is always a mystery to one's self. I think I lead by consensus and build teams and generate commitment. I hope I do, but I'm going to have to let others define that.
Are there other destructive stereotypes that are commonly held?
One is that when a women becomes a mother, she loses career commitment. That's a destructive stereotype. The very fact that a woman is both an employee and a mother, that she is struggling to balance job and family, is proof that she is committed to both. There are stereotypes that women won't relocate in order to get a promotion, which frequently results in women not being offered the opportunity, when perhaps they would be delighted to move. Stereotypes that women aren't aggressive enough, or that women are too aggressive. Stereotypes that women are uncomfortable with real authority and will always be fine in a No. 2 slot but not a No. 1 slot. Stereotypes that women won't help other women. That women don't work well together. These stereotypes are damaging to women, damaging to America's companies, because it doesn't take advantage of women's talents.
When you were in New Haven, you were a member of small group of community leaders, many of whom are gone now. As a result, there seems to be a leadership void in New Haven. Where do leaders come from, and how does a community develop new leadership?
One way communities develop leaders is to take advantage of the leadership capacity of groups which have not participated in leadership roles. Many times, people are most comfortable with people who look like them or are from the same background and share their experiences. One of the ways you develop leadership is to be open to the development of leaders that are all shapes, all sizes, all colors, all parts of the community.
How can women best prepare themselves for top leadership roles?
In the corporate and professional world, and in the not-for-profit world, line as opposed to staff responsibility is the probable road to the top. It's not simply that the pipeline doesn't work for women, it's that they're located in the wrong part of the pipeline. If you want to get to the top, one has to look at the traditional pathways. At Yale, for example, the academic is the pathway to leadership. In the private sector, I would say it's having profit-and-loss responsibility, bottom-line related work. I would recommend to women that they think very carefully about what kinds of jobs they take, where they want to go, and what step along the pathway any given job represents.
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