In an informal survey, Foreign Policy’s Micah Zenko found that in ten prominent foreign policy think tanks in Washington DC, women made up only 21 percent of policy-related positions and 29 percent of total leadership staff. Last Thursday, Vital Voices Global Partnership hosted a tweet chat to discuss the implications of that finding and what to do about it.
Zenko posed but did not discuss an important question: what is lost when women are not represented?
Zenko lists women’s preference for ’soft power’, balancing work and family life and ’unconscious cronyism’ among male colleagues as reasons why women are under-represented in prominent foreign policy positions. And he stops there.
Vital Voices hosted the tweet chat to pick up where Zenko left off, discussing the implications of male-dominated foreign policy. Both genders from numerous fields participated in the discussion and offered various perspectives on the importance of having women in policy-making positions. Here are what some participants voiced on the lack of women in these leadership positions:
Stephenie Foster (@StephenieFoster): Studies show that women on boards can make a difference in a company’s competitiveness & openness to promoting women.
Alex Rinkus (@AlexRinkus): Lose a huge segment of perceptions. Men and women can often see things differently and act differently in same situation
Alyse Nelson (@AlyseNelson): Women look at who’s not at the table, they lead horizontally rather than vertically..this is the brand of leadership our world needs.
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon (@gaylelemmon): Women cant be both half the population AND a specl interest group. Must use voices.
Overall, the discussion was very lively and showcased the many aspects that women can bring to policy. By leading by example and having women in top foreign policy position here in the US, women in the U.S. have an opportunity to show the rest of the world the importance of having women in similar positions in their own countries.
As much as Washington wants to promote the advancement and opportunities for women around the world, it still has its own huge disparities for women.
To view more of the discussion, search for hashtag #VVleadon Twitter.
