PrintAt a Smart Women Lead event in Barnard Hall this Oct. 1, White House Project President Marie Wilson made a compelling case for the elevation of more women to seats of power. The White House Project promotes women’s engagement in politics, and as an article in the Spectator reported the next day, Wilson spoke on the need for more female leaders: “We have to concentrate on leadership. Somebody has to invite women in until we get enough of us.” Wilson critiqued the “ignorance” of the common assumption that women in contemporary society are on par with men, citing studies by American University and Rutgers University, which illuminated public discomfort with female leadership in sectors such as religion, athletics, and the military.
Smart Women Lead, a student group that grew out of the White House Project, is one of a few prominent organizations focusing on women’s leadership at Barnard. Barnard was a fitting venue for the speech: The College has historically been committed to providing women access to an excellent education in New York City.
By virtue of its existence in an educational climate that marginalized or excluded women, it was for a long time at the vanguard of feminism. But now that women have access to myriad educational opportunities, its mission has evolved. For Barnard today, addressing gender inequity entails not only providing women an education but also preparing them to be leaders combating institutional prejudice in the professional world.
Barnard history professor Rosalind Rosenberg insists that a progressive awareness attuned to social change has long shaped the endeavors of Barnard women. Author of “Changing the Subject: How the Women of Columbia Shaped the Way We Think About Sex and Politics,” Rosenberg argues that “feminism [at Barnard] has meant different things at different times ... it has ebbed and flowed in popularity but. ... It has always been stronger at Barnard than in the country at large.”
Sparked by an invitation to explore “The Women Question” at a seminar, her history of Barnard situates the College at the forefront of feminist activism since its inception. At the end of the 19th century, when schools like the University of Chicago, Oberlin, and Cornell University had already creaked open their doors for women and single-sex institutions like Vassar and Smith were just setting tentative feet on academic ground, a woman named Annie Nathan Meyer agitated for the inclusion of women in the most prestigious university in New York City. Rallying the progressive monied forces of New York high society, she pressured the trustees of Columbia to create an “affiliate institution” dedicated to the education of women. After years of campaigning, she finally succeeded: Columbia’s trustees accepted her proposal and Barnard was born.
Barnard expanded opportunities for women in the New York City area seeking—as many at the time were—a college close to home. Coeducational schools like the University of Chicago were able to keep the number of women in their student and faculty bodies quite low, but Columbia—through Barnard—produced an impressive cadre of women who went on to pursue graduate degrees and professional careers. Robert McCaughey, Barnard history professor and author of “Stand, Columbia,” explains that Barnard drew “serious students who had seriously thought about being professionals” with its focus on specialized study within the liberal arts.
And it paid off. For about 50 years starting in 1920, Barnard produced female Ph.D.s at a higher rate than any other college in the country. But even though it graduated academic trailblazers like Margaret Mead, they were exceptions to the rule. For many women, mere entry into professional and graduate schools remained difficult.
Early administrators at Barnard were determined to pave roads to professional leadership for its graduates. Rosenberg remarks that “all the heads of Barnard have always been women, and all those women have been advocates of women.” One dean in particular—Barnard graduate Virginia Gildersleeve—was instrumental in challenging Columbia’s sexist admissions policies. Gildersleeve, who took charge of her alma mater in 1911, sought and won the right for women to enroll in Columbia’s schools of medicine, law, and engineering. Under Gildersleeve’s tenure—and those of subsequent deans—women who attended graduate schools also found jobs at Barnard. Even though Barnard’s faculty was dominated by men, the school had a considerably higher ratio of women professors than Columbia.
Educational access wasn’t just expanding at Barnard and Columbia. Throughout the 20th century, as women’s colleges emerged and universities went coed, the numbers of women in higher education soared. By the 1960s and 1970s, women were no longer just striving for educational opportunities—they were fighting for cultural changes in female roles and rights. Already, Barnard was behind the times. Rosenberg recalls Catherine Stimpson, a vocal feminist in the Barnard English faculty during the ’60s and ’70s, joking that “Barnard’s feminism was up to date, the date being the 1930s.”
To bring Barnard up to the actual date, student activists angrily protested infantilizing policies implemented by the Barnard and Columbia administrations. In 1960, students resisted a new dress code that prohibited supposedly scandalous Bermuda shorts on Columbia’s campus. Eight years later, they protested administrative backlash against Linda LeClair, a student who chose to live with her boyfriend off-campus in violation of Barnard’s policies against cohabitation.
As part of a national wave of consciousness of sexual politics, women were banding together to refashion traditional institutions. A disgruntled group of Barnard students and faculty joined forces with Columbia graduate students to create Columbia Women’s Liberation, a group devoted to female advocacy in the University. They voiced concerns about continued sexism in graduate institutions and faculty hiring processes, sought health services geared toward women, and fought for equitable pay for service workers employed by the University.
Some of the women involved in CWL, like Stimpson and Columbia grad student Kate Millett, later persuaded Barnard to establish the Women’s Center. An organization blending scholarship and activism, the Center became a hub for critical feminist thinking in the city and continues to produce progressive feminist scholarship to this day. In the early ’70s, Barnard also went on to consolidate a women’s studies program.
Leadership exemplified by women like Millett and Stimpson wasn’t conventional. Instead of working within institutions—like Gildersleeve—they organized collectives and pushed institutions to change.
Throughout the 1970s, many of Columbia’s peer institutions started to admit women, increasing pressure on the University to do the same. University President Michael Sovern urged Barnard President Ellen Futter to merge forces, threatening to go coed unilaterally if she refused. Neither side would budge, and in 1982, Columbia announced that it would accept women in its next incoming class.
Rosenberg reflects that in the following years: “Barnard really had to justify its existence in a way that it hadn’t had to justify its existence since the 19th century. And I think that was unsettling, but I think it also ended up being positive because it forced everybody here to think, ‘Well, why does an institution like Barnard continue to exist?’”
As a women’s college in the late 19th and much of the 20th century, Barnard’s mission was to provide women access to a quality education, partially relying on the resources of Columbia. But with its status challenged by the dramatic demographic change across the street, it was forced to refine its vision.
Throughout the ’80s, Rosenberg explains, Barnard sharpened its focus on teaching undergraduates and tailored its mission to “women and their aspirations.”
While Columbia had begun to admit women, it was not a school dedicated solely to the success of women. In the following decades, Futter and her successor, Judith Shapiro, marketed Barnard as an institution sensitive to the needs of female students. Studies arguing that women in single-sex colleges demonstrated better academic performance than in coeducational institutions bolstered their argument, but Barnard’s dedication to women was manifested outside the classroom as well. It wanted its students to graduate prepared to lead.
Barnard junior Yocheved Tupper postulates that Barnard’s emphasis on empowering women stems from the persisting notion that women are not yet equal. “They see it as an imperative that women be leaders. They see it as a value, as crucial, as non-negotiable. Women ought to be leaders. There aren’t enough women in leadership positions, in power.”
If it is indeed Barnard’s goal to launch its students into positions of power, the school’s publications suggest great success. Barnard’s Web site boasts that “graduates reflect the College’s reputation for instilling confidence and high aspirations” and offers an impressive list of alumnae including prominent CEOs, entertainers, and academics.
Producing leaders is a difficult art, but Barnard dedicates ample resources to making it a science. Its career development Web site publicizes special programs to prepare students for their future careers: For instance, they can borrow suits for job interviews or take workshops in personal finance. An initiative called Barnard Experience for Seniors in Transition provides students with professional advice and promotes connections to “banks, both consumer and investment; law firms; consultants; publishers; insurance companies; not-for-profit organizations; public relations and advertising firms; retailers; and some health research and government concerns.”
Barnard has always been in the business of producing women leaders, but under current President Debora Spar’s guidance, emphasis on leadership takes on particular urgency. An advertisement for Spar’s pet project, the newly inaugurated Athena Center for Leadership Studies, promotes its mission to “cultivate smart, engaged, confident leaders who are making their mark on the world.”
The Athena Center stems from the Barnard Leadership Initiative, which was pioneered four years before Spar’s inauguration. Under the direction of economics professor Alan Dye and Associate Dean of Career Development Suzanne Stein, BLI combined coursework with extracurricular engagement to foster leadership skills. But the program was met with a dearth of interest from the student body.
Sarah Besnoff, who graduated from Barnard in 2009, was excited by the prospect of the program her first year there. Besnoff remembers that the program was “re-visioned” when Spar stepped in: “She made it a centerpiece of her vision, spending the whole year getting student feedback.” As SGA president, Besnoff helped organize a town hall dedicated entirely to the leadership initiative, where students could provide input. “Through student government,” she says, “we wanted to ensure Spar heard as many voices as possible.”
Last spring, Spar appointed professor Kathryn Kolbert to head the Athena Center. A journalist and attorney with an impressive resumé in the non-profit world, Kolbert envisions the center as a place for Barnard women to hone leadership skills. She hopes to bring women leaders from across the country to share their resources and experiences with students. These students—Athena Scholars—who will be chosen by a competitive application process, will be expected to complete a set of five core courses related to women and leadership, participate in a mentoring program with a woman established in her career, design a social action program off-campus, and attend a series of seminars in the leadership lab on topics ranging from negotiation to governance.
This kind of advocacy for female leadership evokes a strain of feminism prevalent throughout Barnard’s history. It’s a feminism that seeks to seat women in positions of power and have them effect change from the top. But while breeding future Anna Quindlens and Jean Kirkpatricks is a noble goal for a women’s college, it’s a goal that has its limitations.
Barnard senior Marilla Li argues that “privileging certain kinds of leadership over others is something that both the University and [Barnard] College tend to do.” Women at Barnard who pursue conventional leadership roles can rely on nurturing support structures and are often able to provide input on new leadership initiatives: Kolbert says student government organizations and groups like Smart Women Lead often mediated discussions on the future of the Athena Center.
Madeline Lloyd-Davies, a junior at Barnard, concedes that “Barnard does ... a really good job of training women to be leaders” but also notes that “the way leadership is emphasized, legal jobs and professional CEO jobs are valorized.” It’s not the case that Barnard lacks alternative career programs (the education program, for example, is very strong). It’s simply that those tracks aren’t so well publicized. Lloyd-Davies remembers, “I had moments of terror when I was looking at summer jobs [through Barnard’s database] when I thought, I don’t want to work for a law firm or business, are those my only options?” By doggedly pushing professional opportunities, Lloyd-Davies suggests, Barnard might inadvertently leave behind women interested in fields like education, social work, or theater.
But as a college striving to empower women confronting professional inequity, Barnard faces a conundrum. As Lloyd-Davies explains, if the school tries to “emphasize teaching or social work, they’re anti-feminist. As a women’s college, the administration has to be careful not to emphasize traditional women’s roles.” She understands, then, the tendency toward stressing “professions that are competitive and about getting ahead.”
As an institution dedicated to addressing gender disparities in the professional world, Barnard is an advocate for social change. Encouraging women to enter institutions and positions of power is indeed a way of effecting change—as Barnard senior Anna Steffans notes, this strategy “is good, because one very valid way to enact social change is through the ‘inside.’” But Steffans remains concerned that “this particular form of leadership … overshadows other types of leadership through more radical activism that might be more productive in terms of shaping society.”
Senior Katie Miles says Barnard doesn’t necessarily prepare its students to critically examine the social structures that have historically subordinated women, instead encouraging students to enter those institutions. Students might, Tupper believes, be well served questioning “the actual power we’re trying to tap into.”
That’s not to say that Barnard’s campus is monolithic. Students who actively seek alternative interpretations of female leadership find them. Many of the women interviewed said they explored unorthodox approaches to leadership in disciplines like women’s studies, sociology, and anthropology. Others highlighted the Barnard Center for Research on Women or the Civic Engagement Program under Career Development. Steffans, co-president of Q, Barnard’s group for LGBT students and their allies, sees groups concerned with gender and sexuality as vehicles for leadership based in coalition building and organizing.
But if leadership opportunities at Barnard have been professionally oriented in the past, perhaps the College has been responding to student demand. Steffans says, “It’s clear that if the majority of Barnard women want to focus on these specific forms of leadership (ones that happen to lead to lucrative careers, I suppose) then Barnard should certainly cater to that to some extent.”
Still others explain that the problem with leadership on Barnard’s campus lies not in privileging professional tracks but in advertising the flexibility of leadership skills. As Besnoff reports: “The leadership traits I’ve found at Barnard are applicable to any profession. The goal is making leadership traits be utilized in any possible scenario. Leading a meeting, being a good public speaker, a team player, and inspiring people to a cause are as useful in business as social work.”
But if it truly values leadership outside the boardroom, perhaps Barnard cannot just impart communication skills and management techniques. Its driving philosophy should aim to critically analyze the institutions and social structures that have historically subjugated women and still render the need for single-sex colleges today. The route to gendered justice is not always the inclusion of women in powerful institutions: As evidenced by Barnard’s own history, it is often feminist challenges to institutions that produce progressive social change from the ground up.
Students like Steffans believe that such alternative approaches to female leadership “could be more effectively integrated into the dominant discourse of Barnard women’s leadership” everywhere from “President Spar’s speeches all the way down to classroom and extracurricular discussions.” That might return Barnard to the vanguard of feminist activism. As Steffans sees it, maybe “Barnard could stand to encourage its women leaders to be a bit more radical.”