You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This essay addresses ideas regarding women and leadership, highlighting those gendered aspects of leadership that complicate women's efforts at full success. Leadership need not imply pushing forward, advancing frontiers, or conquering an opposing force. Instead, it may connote initiating collaborative efforts that aim at promoting order and thoughtfulness where chaos and confusion had predominated. Inevitably, such leadership produces forward movement, advanced frontiers, and some form of victory. Examples are drawn from the psychoanalytic literature, and from professional and clinical vignettes. Historical trends are noted as illustration. While the reader inevitably will find evidence of ambivalences and contradictions within the material presented, the author maintains the validity of including these inconsistencies, believing they are closer to an emotive truth than would be a more tightly crafted, perhaps therefore more arbitrary discussion. The purpose of this paper is to highlight, yet again, the vitally important topic of women's efforts and frustrations in leadership issues.
The conservatory of the National Botanical Garden in Washington, D.C., located within sight of the Capitol, provides a metaphor for women who lead or wish to lead. Recently the structure underwent repairs. Among its difficulties, some cacti had pushed so forcefully toward the sun that they cracked the glass ceiling. Symbolic of eco-feminism, they allowed fresh air into an Industrial Age structure that defies Nature and her seasons. Cynics might counter that those cacti are the most phallic-shaped in the collection, and they are especially tough, thick-skinned, and spiny. If they symbolize the new woman leader, these cynics counsel keeping one's distance.