Syllabus

Women as Leaders

PPS 140S
Wednesdays, 3:50-6:20
Room 150, Sanford Institute
Duke University

Betsy Alden, Visiting Lecturer
Hart Leadership Program
alden@duke.edu
Office Hours: Wednesdays, Room 112 at Sanford, 3:00-3:45 p.m.
and by appointment at the Kenan Institute for Ethics, 102 West Duke
660-3199 (o) or 490-0083 (h)

Each Life converges to some Center
Expressed—or Still—
Exists in every Human Nature
A Goal—
Emily Dickinson

Becoming a leader is more than mastering a set of techniques or following a recipe. The art of leadership involves embarking on a personal journey in and through which you will discover the qualities, passions, interests, goals, and vision which will best serve you and those whom you serve. This class will offer you the opportunity to engage in conceptual growth, imaginative exercises, and community service in order to develop personal insight and social responsibility toward your role as a woman in leadership.

Course Outline

August 27 Learning the Language: Challenges and Opportunities for Women’s Leadership

September 3 Remedial Map Reading: Paths Buried in the Underbrush

September 10 How To Use a Trail Guide: Role Models and Mentors

September 17 Lessons Along the Way: What Paths Are You Being Led To?

September 24 Welcoming Companions on the Journey: Coalitions and Communities

October 1 and 8 Where in the World Are We? Locating Ourselves and Others

October 15 Transforming Traditions and Breaking Barriers

October 22 Anticipating the Pitfalls: Glass Ceilings, Sexual Harassment, the Mommy Track, Having It All

October 29 Gathering Info Along the Way: The Dynamics of Leadership

November 5 Inspiration, Intention, and Practice: The Soul of Women’s Leadership

November 12 Where Am I Now? Our Mothers, Our Selves

Nov. 19-Dec. 3 Sharing Our Adventure: Integration Projects

A master can tell you what s/he expects of you.
A teacher, though, awakens your own expectations.
Patricia Neal

Course Requirements

1. Attend all classes and participate actively in discussion.

2. Come prepared, having completed and reflected on all the required readings for the week, ready with your comments and questions. Each student will also be expected to lead one class discussion over assigned chapters or articles, offering critical analysis and posing insightful questions for the rest of the class to consider (which should be sent to the class list by email on the Monday before each Wednesday class).

3. Submit at least 5 (out of 10) Reflection Papers (1-2 pp) weekly, as assigned. These should be emailed to me as Word attachments by noon on Wednesdays, so I can have a sense of your responses before class. These should be distilled (i.e., not composed at the last minute!) from your notes and journals and should present a coherent perspective, which may include any of the following: your reaction to the concepts and ideas presented in the assigned readings; what these concepts tell you about how women define leadership, how women behave as leaders, and how others accept women as leaders; how you react to these particular issues of concern to women; your reactions to class activities and discussions; relevant personal experiences; and emerging insights, goals, thoughts, feelings, questions, concerns regarding yourself as a leader and your personal leadership development. In all cases, the purpose is to relate the readings to your own development as a woman leader.

Your writing style should be direct and conversational, with careful proofreading for coherence and accuracy. I will respond to these papers by email and in conferences. (Each paper will be worth 6 points, and I WILL take off for careless errors/typos in spelling and punctuation!)

4. Participate in the service-learning experience at Chewning Middle School, contributing your own talents to your small group’s project and paying attention to what you are learning from it. This will include 2 hours per week mentoring 12-14 year olds and three Reflection Sessions.

The Chewning mentorship program is designed as a service-learning program in which not only will you be providing service in the form of guidance to Durham youth, but you will also be actively applying what you learn from that service to your academic work for the course. Students should learn valuable lessons about themselves and their lives through both the service and reflection aspects of the program. In participating in the Chewning mentorship, you will not only help the girls learn about leadership but will yourselves gain crucial leadership skills, improved organizational abilities, and an understanding of the role that civic duty plays in successful leadership.
After each visit to Chewning, you should post brief responses (on the class web Blackboard) linking your service-learning/leadership practice with course concepts, responding to the questions of What is relevant? So what? Now what? (These postings are due by each Wed. noon.)

5. Complete your Integration Project, in consultation with the professor, and prepare to present it to the class on November 19 or December5. The Integration Project will be a focused inquiry of your own design, enabling you to explore one aspect of the course in greater depth. In preparation for choosing a topic, you willreview topics in our texts and explore selected internet sites of feminist activist organizations to decide which issue you want to become involved with by Oct. 8. Your topic should be approved and your work on the project should be underway by (October 17). The final project will consist of a professional 15 minute presentation to the class, with 8-10 pages of supporting documentation.

Grading

Reflection Papers (5) 30%
Women Leaders Quiz 10%
Class Presentation 10%
Quality of Class Involvement 10%
Service-Learning Involvement 25%
Integration Project 15%

Resources
REQUIRED READINGS

Baumgardner, Jennifer and Amy Richards. Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and
the Future. New York: Farrat, Straus and Giroux, 2000. [ISBN 0-374-52622-2]

Bouvard, Marguerite G. Women Reshaping Human Rights: How Extraordinary Activists
Are Changing the World. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, Inc, 1996.
[ISBN 0-8420-2563-4]

Morgan, Robin. Sisterhood is Forever: A Woman’s Anthology for the New Milennium. New York: Washington Square Press, 2003 [ISBN 0-7434-6627-6]

Ms. Campus Pack (including a year’s subscription)

Handouts will be distributed throughout the semester.

SUPPLEMENTAL READINGS

Astin, Helen S. and Carole Leland. Women of Influence, Women of Vision: A Cross-
Generational Study of Leaders and Social Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Publishers, 1991. [ISBN 0-7879-5221-4]

Buchanan, Constance H. Choosing to Lead: Women and the Crisis of American Values.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1996. [ISBN 0-8070-2003-6]

Helgesen, Sally. The Female Advantage: Women’s Ways of Leadership. New York:
Doubleday, 1995. [0-385-41911-2]

Jamieson, Kathleen H. Beyond the Double Bind: Women and Leadership. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1995. [ISBN 0-19-511572-4]

Kellerman, Barbara. Reinventing Leadership: Making the Connection Between Politics and
Business. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. [ISBN 0-7914-4072-9]

Hartman, Mary S. Talking Leadership: Conversations With Powerful Women. New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 1999. [ISBN 0-8135-2560-8]

Miles, Rosalind. Who Cooked the Last Supper?: The Women’s History of the World.
New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001. [ISBN 0-609-80695-5]

KEY WEB SITES
Feminist Majority Foundation www.feministcampus.org and www.feminist.org
Women Leaders Online http://wlo.org
Women’s Voting Guide http://womenvote.org
Women in Politics http://www.glue.umd.edu/~cliswp/
Women Organizing for Change http://www.links2go.com/more/wlo.org/
Catalyst Women http://www.catalystwomen.org/research.html
NOW http://www.now.org
Duke Univ. Women’s Center http://wc.stuaff.duke.edu/
Duke Univ. Women Studies http://www.duke.edu/womstud/
Center for Women’s Global Leadership http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~cwgl/humanrights/gc/gcindex.html
Business Women’s Network www.BWNi.com
Center for Reproductive Law and Policy http://www.crlp.org
Ms. Foundation for Women www.ms.foundation.org
Financial Women International www.fwifoundation.org
Feminist.Com www.feminist.com

Center for American Women and Politics www.newleadership.rutgers.edu
Choice USA www.choiceusa.org and www.naral.org
Women Count (to mobilize women voters) www.womencount.org

Mentors Peer Resources: http://www.mentors.ca/mentor.html
The National Mentoring Partnership: http://www.mentoring.org/
The Prudential Youth Leadership Institute: http://www.pyli.org/

For Women’s History, see http://www.women.eb.com, www.feminist.org (“The Feminist Chronicles”), www.nwhp.org, www.nwhm.org

And MANY MORE (See Resource List at the end of Manifesta!)

Personal Notes/ Journal
Please take the time to sit at your computer or with a notebook/journal regularly during the week to make notes about your observations, insights, questions, and reflections on the topic of Women as Leaders and yourself as both a woman and a leader. These will be confidential, but will become the basis for your papers, presentations, and integration project. Each week you will submit a written reflection, but these papers should be a distillation of your thinking, rather than the ramblings which characterize a stream-of-consciousness journal entry.

Student-Teacher Conferences
Please schedule a personal Conference during my office hours before October 8 to begin to define your interests and process for the Integration Project. We will refine this as you proceed, and another conference time will be scheduled if needed.

Speakers at Duke
Try to attend presentations by outstanding women who come to campus! I encourage this by letting you substitute reflections on these (within a week after the presentation) for one of your reflection papers on the readings, if you wish.

Weekly Assignments

August 27 Introduction to the course and to each other: Syllabus, Structure, Strands, Service-Learning;

September 3 pp. 1-76, Who Cooked the Last Supper? The Women’s History of the World ; “I Am A Feminist And…” from Ms Magazine; and skim your issue of Ms Magazine, Summer 2003, and Ms. Magazine issues on “Women of the Year” and “Best of Ms Fiction 1972-02”
Reflection Topic 1: Discuss specific aspects of this information which may contribute to your understanding of women as leaders. What is your emotional response to learning of this “lost” history—and what would you like to do about the fact that this information is omitted from educational curriculum and also from public discourse?

September 8-9, 2:30-4:30 Service-Learning Orientation at Chewning: Mentoring and Leadership

September 10 Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future, ix-201.
“ Women Who Dared” hand-out to prepare for quiz on the 17th.
Reflection Topic 2: How do you identify (or not) with Amy and Jennifer’s journeys. How are they similar to/different from your own?
Your LEAPS facilitators will also be in the class to work with the Chewning teams in goal-setting for your service there.

September 17 Manifesta, 202-416 (including all end notes and bibliography).
Reflection Topic 3: Write an imaginary dialogue between you and one of the women on the Women Who Dared list, probing for her opinions on a topic you are interested in.
Quiz on “Women Who Dared”

(September 18 Hart Fellows will be speaking at Sanford about their international work last year.)

September 24 Sisterhood is Forever, Intro, xv-lv (“New World Woman”), and Part I, “Some Basics,” 3-117. Reflection Topic 4: Morgan concludes her Intro with the comment, “ Not for nothing does the refrain,’ It’s up to us’ ring through these essays.” With regard to the issues presented in Part I, where, how, and why do you feel challenged to begin to exercise your leadership?

(Week of Oct. 1- October 8 Schedule Personal Conferences in Betsy’s office)

October 1 Conclude discussion of Part I. Read “Service Learning and Leadership Development” (Timothy Stanton in NSEE Journal, 1987), and write Reflection Paper 5 (required) relating your own experience at Chewning to Stanton’s concepts. Note especially Stanton’s point that service-learning offers one the chance to be “self-directed” in learning. How have you experienced this, and how have you responded to this “chance”—i.e., what have you discovered you need to learn, and what are you learning about yourself and your leadership issues? Give specific examples related to your service at Chewning and your teamwork. In what other ways do you think service-learning and leadership are related?
Video of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Not For Ourselves Alone.”
LEAPS Reflection Session 1 in class.
Dinner Party at Betsy’s house, 6:45

(October 2 Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, will speak at Sanford.)

October 8 SF, Part 3, “Juggling Jeopardies, ” 165-266.
Reflection Topic 6


October 15 SF, Part 5, “Workplaces,” 325-444.
Reflection Topic 7: Choose one of the workplace issues described in these readings and analyze its implications for your own leadership.

October 22 SF, Part 6, “Tactics and Trends,” 447-413.
Reflection Topic 8: Identify the trends which most concern you as a woman leader and consider some of the tactics you find most appealing to your own leadership style. What do you need to do to prepare yourself to engage with these emerging styles and strategies?

October 29 Read Women Reshaping Human Rights, Intro(ix-xxvi), Brantley (21-40), Bates (89-106), Guttierez, (179-198) and all of Part IV (221-286). As you read, be thinking of HOW this woman has “connected,” what specific human rights problems she addresses, what “alternative political styles” she has adopted, what strategies she has employed, and how moral theory plays out in her life.
Duke Law Professor Catherine Admay will be speaking with us on women’s international leadership issues.
Reflection Topic 9: Which women and what specific leadership skills do you find yourself resonating to? Why and How?
Please plan to attend the presentation by Darlene Nicgorski, former human rights activist and Ms “cover girl,” at 7 pm tonight.

November 5 “Coalition Politics: Turning the Century” (Bernice Johnson Reagon in Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology); “Sisterhood: Political Solidarity between Women” (bel hooks, Feminist Theory, 1984); “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” (Audre Lord, from Sister Outsider) Helgeson, The Web of Inclusion” “Strong Women and Feminists” by Jean O’Barr; ER “Women and Leadership: What Difference Does It Make?” (Nannerl O. Keohane speech, 1988).
LEAPS Reflection Session 2

November 12 “Leading from Within” (Parker Palmer monograph, 1987);
from Being Real (1995), Rebecca Walker; “The Erotic: Heart of Transformational Leadership” (1998), Virginia Pharr; Gloria Steinem, “Revving Up for the Next Generation,”
Guest speakers will be with us to present a “Dialogue on Women’s Leadership” using personal stories for reflection.
Reflection Topic 10 (required) on Our Mothers, Our Selves (handout)

November 19 and December 3 Class Presentation of Final Integration Projects

(November 26 Happy Thanksgiving)

December 3 Final Service-Learning Reflection session, immediately after class at 6:30-7:1

Your Integration Work will consist of three parts:

1) an “activist” leadership project which will address an issue of concern to women, which you hope to continue to work on far beyond this class. This is an opportunity for you to make a good start.
2) a 15 minute professional presentation to our class on November 19 or December 3, in which you convey your passion about this issue and engage the class in an interactive process to help them understand more about it.
3) a paper of 8-10 pages, due on December 10, illustrating what you have learned about
women’s leadership, and your own in particular, from researching, developing, and executing your project. In this paper you will also relate your leadership lessons to your service-learning experience and to the assigned course readings this semester.