Not Your Mother’s Women’s Movement: Women and Leadership in the Twenty-First Century

Editors’ Introduction

We begin with Mary Hartman’s essay in order to describe the genesis of the feminist movement since the 1960s. The articles that follow illustrate her point that the movement, if it is still a movement, has continued to change dramatically since its beginnings in the 1960s. As we demonstrate in other essays in this collection, women have now attained leadership positions, although not in as great numbers as we had imagined. With only 14 women leading the FT global 500 companies, we are still, today, challenged with empowering women. But the challenge is different now in a global economy where interrelationships and networks, not single leaders, are more propitious leadership models. Indeed, as the next chapters will argue, a global networked economy demands that leadership styles should be changed, moving from a hierarchical individualistic model to a more organic, collaborative systemic approach. The question is how to fight against gender discrimination in this new context. How does one steer clear or gender stereotypes, whilst at the same time taking the embodied realities of women seriously and refusing to water down the specific challenges that women face? Hartman helps us rethink our strategies, our labels, and our attitudes. She therefore sets the scene for a critical evaluation of the variety of other strategies that we will explore in the course of the book.