Leading Ourselves to a Better Future: A Feminine Approach to Organization
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Authors
Taylor, Amy
Issue Date
1992
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
As a white woman, raised in a white male system, talking
about the differences between men and women is a touchy
subject. First, any acknowledgements of difference between
men and women brings the risk of supporting the jerks in
their efforts to prove the natural inferiority of women.
Then, you realize the jerks probably won't be reading a SIP
on feminine leadership. So you begin to worry about the next
problem -- offending the "nice" men who do read the SIP. You
know you're going to criticize some parts of the system that
dominate your life and, very possibly, criticize them and
their behaviors and opinions. So you say, "I'll just be
really careful. Always write 'feminine' and 'masculine' in
quotation marks. Keep saying 'not all men are like this,
but .... '" After ten days of looking blankly at your computer
screen, you realize, "Hey, this is the problem. Every
conversation about women always ends up centering around
where men fit in and how men will be hurt if we talk about
women and their talents."
When we look at leaders, we can place them on a
spectrum of characteristics that has "feminine" on one side
and "masculine" on the other (see Appendix 3) . I will submit
this disclaimer once and only once: there are men and women
falling everywhere within this spectrum, there are women at
the most "masculine" end and men at the most "feminine." But
for the most part, the descriptors "masculine" and "feminine"
are not inappropriate as women generally fall on the feminine
side and men on the masculine. To acknowledge that women
offer a different type of leadership than what our society
traditionally understands as leadership is to recognize there
is a feminine culture. We Americans all live in a white male
culture, a "White Male System."l In preparing my SIP I have
spent a good deal of time trying to find an equal number of
criticisms of the female and male system. This is an academic
project and I didn't want to appear to be biased. I am.
American culture has spent too much time in this white male
system and I strongly believe it's time the system started
learning from women, African Americans, Mexican Americans,
Native Americans and other people on the fringe of the white
male system.
Description
v, 57 p.