Service Learning Paper

Women and Leadership –Final Service Learning Paper

Project Summary

              Due to the increasing statistics about bullying in schools and my previous experience of the middle school girls who were impacted on this issue last semester, I wanted my service learning to help younger generations of girls to know that they can stop unwanted harassment and ultimately become leaders in their everyday lives. In order to work towards the bigger picture, I had to help the Young Women Leaders Program raise funds through a basketball tournament, to host an anti-bullying workshop.

            Valerie and I focused more heavily on donations for the raffle and food to serve. The day of the basketball tournament I picked up these items and tabled for CAP/AAUW organizations that YWLP received a grant to pursue this research.  Following this I assisted with the “Lead Out Loud (L.O.L.) ant-bullying workshop” through time spent on working on the posters, the itinerary for school officials and contributing to website information for students, parents, counselors, administration, etc.  The day of this event I had the task of organizing the elementary groups for the Lawton Chiles facilitators with their lessons. Subsequent of this event I started to assist with transcribing of the interviews of the parents of the middle school girls.

           Initially when I started to write my proposal for service learning I wanted to focus on the fundraising element because I know it required a great deal of energy and commitment to ensure that this project was going to happen. However after the tournament I realized that my contribution to this one aspect wouldn’t allow me to really reflect on the outcome of the actual workshop. That’s why in a previous Activism log I made statements about revising my proposal to focus on the actual workshop itself. The project was successful in terms of bringing about awareness among the schools and that the middle school girls while nervous they took to the lessons with ease and after a while you could see that they were getting involved and believing that they prevent bullying within their schools and community.   The only limitations were that during the workshop we didn’t get through rotating the schools so they could go through the different lesson plans each school had set in place. However by the end of the first discussion you could tell that the kids really got the message and even within my group, members who were initially hesitant, had so much to share.

            Hindsight has taught me that it’s best to have realistic time management, that as long as your initial message is still intact you can’t put too much energy into looking at planning and finally that young people want to be able to lead they want to be able to help others, they just need to have their agency recognized. This experience working with the community reinforced the idea of transformative leadership. The course texts also correlates with the solutions for how women can diminish doubt about how they see themselves as leaders and the ways in which they lead.

Synthesis

              My service learning project best corresponds to the question of: What are effective strategies for women trying to overcome the limitations of “leadership” as it is currently constructed? Eagly and Carli state that women should demonstrate that they are both agentic and communal, create social capital and balance of both commonly associated masculine and feminine traits are necessary for success (167). I felt that there was more of a connection between this question and my service learning project because I got to witness this development take place. Through assisting the middle school girls with their lesson plans and facilitating in the discussion I could see the shift in attitude change from the beginning of fear and doubt to eagerness of wanting to make a difference and vocalizing their opinions and experiences on the topic of bullying. The girls were very communal in the fact that they were able to support one another and assist any of the elementary children with their tasks throughout the lesson. Furthermore this sense of agency and communal nature was exemplified between my classmates and I working together to raise funds for this workshop but becoming autonomous agents who were able to delegate tasks amongst ourselves based on our skill set.

              In terms of balancing masculine and feminine traits with the girls, we disguised this by having them identify and acknowledge the different types of leadership through icebreaker activities such as the human knot. Additionally it was important that we encouraged both the girls and boys at the workshop that all of these traits of leadership are widely embraced and should be used by everyone. Through the compilation of the campus action projects the girls were able to use volunteers from the Women Studies department and their administrators as social capital to help them accomplish their goals and carry out their mission of preventing bullying within their schools.

              During the day of the actual workshop before we could talk about the solutions to dissolve and prevent bullying there had to be a discussion of leadership so regardless of who was involved (bully, victim or bystander) would understand the different ways to lead in terms of problem solving and as a result this would build upon their autonomy. This has a similar message of how assuming that one style of leadership will achieve all goals. Jean Lipman-Blumen discusses both scopes of feminine and masculine traits are necessary to lead and need to be addressed. He introduces how the tradition view of leadership in America is based on the masculine traits we assume men to have in order to lead. Then the article challenges this widely accepted view by stating that, “ego ideal draws on a very limited set of achieving styles, we shall call ‘direct styles,’ that emphasize individualism, self-reliance and belief in one’s own abilities” (185). He goes on to say that we should not be so quick to reject the behaviors that are considered, “instrumental and relational” that are assimilated with feminine style of leadership.

             

Reflection and Connection

            My experiences with leadership have validated the concept of the double bind. In the past, I felt unsuccessful and criticized for emulating masculine traits associated with leadership but assumed as passive when I tried to emulate more feminine aspects leadership. I think especially for me this has validated my feeling as a double minority. I always understood why I would have restricted access due to my race, because the idea was reinforced in my household in my early childhood. I knew that because of my gender, judgments were going to made against me but I didn’t fully understand all the implications of how society restricts women, even to the extent that women would discourage each other. On the other hand I feel that those with this knowledge of leadership are responsible for passing along what they know in order to change popular belief about women and their leadership style.

I agree that there has to be a balance between the two and that as women should be underestimate our abilities as leaders. I especially felt with this experience that women build a sense of agency when we as a community of women challenge our perspectives of what our limitations are. Additionally, we can acknowledge and start maneuvering through the labyrinth. Suggestions that are mentioned to maneuver may seem overwhelming but unless we start somewhere. I think the finishing line is going to be redefined if we redefine what we find as being successful, especially since most of the time the institutions we discussed were of a corporate or political atmosphere.

It is frustrating to know that men will always have an advantage in leadership and even while we learn about new ways to lead, I think it’s disheartening to know that women will not receive credit even when we are the inspiration for these ideas.

Education about leadership style needs to be taught more than just within these environments. Again while it may seem impossible, because we’re still learning this ourselves, if we can encourage our generation to embrace different styles to leadership, especially our young girls. Sometimes I feel that we put so much emphasis on shaping feminine little girls that we forget to them how to play with the boys and not suppress their accomplishments. In the beginning of this course, I would assimilate women’s leadership with transformative t, however there is more than one type of leadership and I feel that this represents the personality or the essence of women’s leadership is but it is not the only way women lead. After this class I would define women’s leadership as ever-changing balance of authority and with communal regard towards others and can be transformed and applied within any institution. Feminist leadership, I feel, does embody a transformative nature but puts focus around a social issue rather than tasks or occupational representation. In contrast with women’s leadership, feminist leadership tries has to have more of an emphasis of trying to be inclusive to everyone, regardless of its reputation.

Works Cited

Carli, Linda L. "How Do Some Women Find Their Way Through the Labyrinth?" Through the

            Labyrinth. By Alice H. Eagly. Boston: Harvard Business School, 2007. 165-69. Print.

Lipman-Blumen, Jean. "Connective Leadership: Female Leadership Styles in the 21st-Century

             Workplace." Sociological Perspectives 1st ser. 35 (1992): 183-203. Print.