Young Women and Leadership

Katrina Lee-Koo, Lesley Pruitt, Katrina Lee-Koo, Lesley Pruitt

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9780429537073
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Through a range of case studies in Asia and the Pacific, this edited collection highlights the extent of the unique ways in which young women lead to create change in their own lives and their communities, as well as in the structures, cultures, and institutions in which they live and work.

This volume challenges and reshapes the boundaries and relationships of power that animate traditional attitudes to leadership by exploring the often overlooked role of women as leaders and drivers of social change. The text draws on a number of complex case studies in Asia and the Pacific in order to demonstrate how young women around the world have developed organised approaches to leadership that are often collective, collaborative, and transformative. However, as the authors reveal, they also deviate from traditional forms of leadership that have dominated the literature and public understanding.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of the theory and/or practice of leadership. More broadly, it will also be useful for students and scholars of political science, international studies, peace and conflict studies, international and community development, leadership studies, cultural studies, youth studies, and gender studies.

1 Building a Theory of Young Women’s Leadership

Katrina Lee-Koo and Lesley Pruitt

Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to begin to develop a theory of young women’s leadership in community-based and social justice spaces in Asia and the Pacific. This theory is long overdue. After all, the existing leadership literature predominantly considers those who are already broadly accepted as leaders, and tends to highlight the operation of leadership in formal and public spaces. Therefore, the bulk of the academic literature focuses upon leadership in corporate and business cultures, in formal politics and political organisations, and in the delivery of education. Predictably, this literature has a masculinist and ageist bias. It rarely conceives of, accounts for, or is inclusive of young women as leaders. This is not surprising because young women rarely inhabit these spaces. While this may be slowly changing in a number of sectors, young women are seldom visible as leaders of organisations, government bodies, or businesses. Most communities rarely immediately identify young women as leaders, nor do they actively advocate or create space for their inclusion.

However, this does not mean that young women’s leadership is non-existent. Instead, it indicates that the models and sites of leadership dominant in the literature are not inclusive of the ways and places in which young women lead. Scholarly analysis has not yet extended to include the ways in which young women work to generate social, cultural, and political change in the communities in which they operate. This chapter seeks to address this oversight. It argues that young women do lead in creative and non-traditional ways. Our research has found that young women throughout the region are actively engaged in identifying and articulating social concerns, motivating others to recognise these concerns, and supporting one another to engage in transformative politics. We identify this process as leadership, and argue that its impact can be felt in the lives of individuals, their families, and broader communities. Moreover, this impact can be tangibly linked to rights’ promotion and social justice.

The purpose of this chapter therefore is to actively look for young women’s leadership and to identify the values, features, and frameworks that animate it. This requires looking outside the traditionally defined sites of leadership and in those places that are usually designated as informal and private. Seeing young women’s leadership requires looking beyond the traditional models and relational patterns that have come to be associated with ‘quality leadership’ and exploring the non-hierarchical and diffuse patterns that typify young women’s leadership. Finally, it requires a critical engagement with the role that identity plays in creating the inter-subjective relationships that shape the experiences of young women leaders. Because of their general exclusion from the formal realms of leadership, this chapter describes young women’s leadership in informal and community-based spaces and in social justice spaces such as programmes and activities associated with gender equality, human rights’ promotion, and community justice realms. In doing so, this chapter draws from existing research into youth, adolescent, and women’s leadership while also analysing data collected throughout Asia and the Pacific.

This chapter argues that young women’s exclusion from traditional leadership modes has necessitated their developing non-traditional means of leading in their communities. The research has found that young women’s leadership challenges traditional leadership models in a number of core ways: it is predominately located in private or personal as opposed to public spaces; it is frequently informal rather than relying upon formal appointments or power structures; young women overwhelmingly describe leadership as a horizontal and collaborative relationship rather than conforming to traditional, vertical power structures; they see leadership as a shared experience rather than one that is independent or lonely; and many identify their leadership as connected to a broader process of social change that will transform unequal and unjust power structures.

Methodology and data collection

Both this chapter and the following chapter draw primarily from qualitative research undertaken throughout Asia and the Pacific between 2016 and 2019. It is predominantly this field data that we draw upon to build our theory of young women’s leadership. This research adopted a participatory, feminist, and grounded approach. It was participatory in the sense that young women leaders were involved in the initial design of the research and invited to respond to the scope, data collection techniques, and methodology that was proposed by the authors. This took place during a meeting of young women leaders in Yangon in 2016. Young women also had the opportunity to respond to the research findings in a series of validation workshops that took place during the Human Rights Council in Geneva (in 2017), a Young Women’s Leadership Workshop in Canberra (in 2017), a regional YWCA Young Women’s Leadership workshop in Bangkok (in 2018) and during a side event at the Commission for the Status of Women in New York (in 2019).

As part of its participatory approach, the research also seeks to be young women centric. To that end, we situate young women as the primary experts in defining and describing their leadership. We rely upon their voices and experiences, looking for both consistent themes and areas of dissent, to build a theory of young women’s leadership. While we juxtapose our findings with the views of the broader community, including scholarly research in leadership studies, feminist studies, and cognate scholarly areas, our focus remains upon highlighting the unique experiences of young women as they have been described to us. In doing so we draw upon the work of Kathy Charmaz (2006: 9) who describes grounded methods as “a set of principles and practices, not as prescriptions or packages.”

As feminist researchers trained in the field of International Relations, we are interested in why certain questions get more attention and why others do not, and as feminists a normative purpose animates our research efforts (Enloe 1990, 2004; Ackerly, Stern and True 2006; Carpenter 2010). In short, we agree with Carpenter that “researchers have a responsibility both to be biased in favor of making the world a better place, and to be transparent about their normative goals and these goals’ impact on their empirical findings” (Carpenter 2012: 376). This is predominantly evident in two ways. First, our research positions gender equality as a core human right and promotes a transformational politics that will encourage and embrace capable young women in leadership roles. Second, the research looks for silences in contemporary leadership studies, and asks ‘Where are the young women in leadership?’ Having identified their absence, our research extends beyond existing research to understand where young women are, if and how they are leading, and why they are absent from official accounts of leadership. Our attempts to rectify this absence began with fieldwork.

In total, 84 semi-structured interviews were undertaken with people associated with young women’s leadership. Roughly half of these interviews were with young women leaders and half were with community-based stakeholders. The young women leaders we interviewed were from the following countries: Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, Bangladesh, Bougainville, Fiji, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, and Thailand. The interviewees fell into two categories. The first group were those who self-identified as leaders and held some type of formal or recognised leadership role. This included those who worked for young women’s rights’ organisations, or who had participated as a youth representative at a global event (such as the Commission on the Status of Women meetings, or the Human Rights Council), or had been acknowledged as a youth leader through a scholarship, prize, or training programme. This cohort could draw upon their own experiences of leadership and these interviews provided insights into the barriers they faced, and their perceptions of the attitudes of others. This group also strongly self-identified as leaders and were able to offer considered and often well-rehearsed responses to questions regarding young women’s leadership.

The second group of respondents were young women who had recently undertaken a young women’s leadership training programme that had been offered by their national Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA). This programme, known as RiseUp! provides a peer-led, human rights based training programme for young women. Its content covers human rights issues facing young women in each community such as violence against women, sexual reproductive health and rights, early and forced marriage, and access to services. It also develops leadership skills including advocacy, public speaking, and confidence building. These young women were generally those who had not (or did not) consider themselves leaders, but had been referred to the programme by a friend or community member. Interviews with these young women provided insight into their often-changing attitudes towards leadership after participating in a leadership training course. They also spoke of general attitudes towards leadership in their own communities and identified what they saw as barriers to young women claiming their rights.

In addition, the research included focus group discussions with young women in Myanmar, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, and Thailand. In nearly all cases young women peer researchers, who were trained and supported by the authors, conducted these in local languages. The transcripts were then translated into English. Participants in these discussions included a mix of young women who did and did not self-identify as leaders. This generated data on young women’s attitudes towards leadership within a dynamic group setting.

The authors also conducted participant observation in a number of sites. This included attendance at the 2017 Triennial Pacific Women’s Conference in Samoa, the 2017 Youth for Human Rights Forum preceding the Human Rights Council in Geneva, the 2019 Commission on the Status of Women meetings in New York, and various young women’s training programmes offered by the YWCA in Yangon, Samoa, Taipei, and Bangkok.

Finally, this chapter also draws upon interviews with stakeholders associated with young women’s rights. This included funders and donors, women’s rights and civil society organisations, and community leaders across Asia and the Pacific. While many of these stakeholders were generally involved in promoting gender equality and women’s rights, the interviews provided an opportunity to gather data on attitudes towards young women’s leadership.

For the purposes of the research we generally described a young woman as someone under the age of 30. This is consistent with the philosophy of our primary research partner, the World YWCA, and is also consistent with other international organisations and agendas including the United Nations Security Council’s Youth, Peace and Security agenda. It is important to acknowledge, however, that there are competing formal and informal definitions of ‘youth’. In terms of the research, our understanding of youth became much more fluid as the research progressed. Conceptualisations of youth are culturally specific. In the Pacific, for instance, women up to the age of 35 and beyond continue to self-identify or be referred to as ‘young’, with marriage and maternity both being significant determinants of status (see Clarke and Azzopardi 2017). Therefore, while the overwhelming majority of our research participants fell within the 18–29 age bracket, we also recognised those outside this range who self-identified as young. It is predominantly this field data that we draw upon to build our theory of young women’s leadership.

Challenging traditional approaches to leadership

Why have young women been so marginalised in efforts to understand leadership and develop it as a practice? One answer to this question, as outlined above, lies in the fact that young women generally fall outside the study and recognised practice of leadership. Traditional approaches to leadership studies have tended to focus upon those who have already been identified and are widely accepted as leaders. As Hoyt and Kennedy (2008: 204) point out: “Most of the work regarding the concept of leadership has focused on the study of male leaders and of leadership within the context of a dominant Caucasian, male-based, upper middle-class culture.” This, they continue, has resulted in “very little research that explores how women lead or how theories of leadership apply to women who also belong to other non-dominant groups” (Hoyt and Kennedy 2008: 204). In this sense, leadership research tends to focus upon formal, hierarchical, and male-dominated sectors such as politics, the military, and business, while research on leadership in informal spaces and sectors such as social movements and civil society remains largely unexplored.

With a focus upon studying those already in recognised leadership roles and sectors, it is unsurprising that the typologies that have emerged in leadership research have a masculinist focus in both the characteristics and the structures they highlight. This androcentric bias can be seen when considering Grint’s 2010 overview of the field of leadership studies. He identifies four typologies of leadership that have come to dominate the literature. The first is studies that focus upon the features of the position that the leader holds, such as the Office of the President or Chief Executive Officer of an organisation. This research includes those who “define leadership as the activity undertaken by someone whose position on a vertical, and usually formal, hierarchy provides them with the resources to lead” (Grint 2010: 4). As this volume demonstrates, there remain significant barriers to young women’s ability to access such positions. Therefore they tend to be under-represented – if not entirely absent – in research that focuses upon this type of leadership.

Second, Grint highlights the body of literature that analyses the personal qualities and characteristics that typify successful leadership, that is, a leader’s style and charisma (Grint 2010: 7). For instance, there are numerous studies that examine the contrasting leadership styles of US Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama, or Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Similarly, this research highlights masculine qualities and characteristics, reflecting the fact that its research subjects tend to be men (though of course not always). When leadership is associated with masculine qualities, this can result in the exclusion of women. Often, the socially constructed personality traits that typify traditional values of great leaders, “such as aggressiveness, out-spoken behaviour, and a take-charge attitude” (see Hoyt and Kennedy 2008: 210) promote a particular type of masculinity that would render women who adopted such characteristics as abnormal or illegitimate. Jamieson (1995) refers to this as the gender double bind, where women are discredited if they appear too masculine, but at the same time cannot be taken seriously as leaders if they seem too feminine.

Third, Grint identifies the proliferation of literature that focuses upon results-based approaches to leadership, where the outcomes of successful leadership are analysed and measured as determinants of quality leadership. However, such an approach assumes that results can be easily measured and assessed, and may focus upon results that can be easily quantified, such as profit or costs. This tends to prioritise results over other values such as ethics (Grint 2010: 12). Often it is the latter values that are of significance to social justice movements, where outcomes are less tangible, more diffuse, and may take decades to emerge. In this sense, the approach may be more suited to business than it is to civil society. The results-based approach reflects a further androcentric bias in the assumption that the structures and measure of success are gender-neutral (see Acker 1990). In this case, the choice of outcomes that are seen as more important than others (for example profit or people, success or process) may differ across leaders, and may be infused with gender dynamics.

Finally, Grint (2010: 11–12) highlights the literature that is focused upon the process of leadership, or what it means to behave like a leader. Again, this may have a clear androcentric bias, particularly when perceptions of legitimate behaviours can be highly gendered (see Lee-Koo and Maley 2017). This may particularly be the case in times of crisis or emergency, when there is an expectation that leaders will show strength, determination, and quick decision-making, characteristics that are usually gendered masculine. Similarly, anger is a gendered emotion. Research has shown that in professional settings angry male leaders are afforded a higher status, power, and independence in their jobs than women are. Brescoll and Uhlman (2008: 268) argue that this is because angry women are more likely to be seen as hysterical and lacking self-control. Ultimately, the tendency to focus upon existing leaders or statesmen marginalises analysis of how others might lead in non-recognised leadership fields or may need to overcome structural and attitudinal biases in their process of being seen as behaving like a leader.

The persistence of the androcentric bias across each of these typologies demonstrates that identity has rarely been a significant consideration in mainstream leadership research. While there are emerging exceptions, the focus in tra...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• 1. Building a Theory of Young Women’s Leadership
• 2. Critical components for advancing young women’s leadership
• 3. Young women’s leadership in conflict: Crossing borders in Myanmar
• 4. Building inclusive young women’s leadership in the Pacific: Spaces for change
• 5. “There’s space for both”: Young women and intergenerational leadership in Papua New Guinea
• 6. Young women in UN peace and security policy: At risk or in the lead?
• Conclusion
• Index