Empowering Women Leaders

In March, the inaugural Boston University Women’s Leadership Symposium addressed the history of women’s leadership and the roadblocks women still face today. Hosted by the BU College of Communication, the symposium kicked off with a lecture by producer Nancy Armstrong (COM’98) on Makers, her 2013 Emmy-nominated documentary series about “how women have helped shape America over the last 50 years.”

Following Armstrong’s talk, Jodi Luber (’84, COM’86,’89), a COM master lecturer and member of the CGS Dean’s Advisory Board, moderated a panel discussion featuring journalist Ida Lewis (’54, COM’56), a pioneer among African American women in journalism. Lewis was the first black female panelist on the TV news show Meet the Press and the first black woman to publish a national magazine, Encore, which she also founded.

In response to an audience member who asked Lewis what encouragement and advice she would offer to women working in male-dominated fields, Lewis said, “Each time you’re knocked down, you just get up. I remember being knocked down, being told ‘Oh, well you can’t do that,’ and I would just decide that was not true and keep going.”

Lynn O’Brien Hallstein, author of the book Bikini-Ready Moms: Celebrity Profiles, Motherhood, and the Body, talked about how women can become successful leaders while juggling parenting and caretaking responsibilities. “It’s not that women aren’t capable. It’s not that women aren’t getting educated or higher degrees,” said Hallstein, a CGS associate professor of rhetoric. “Women are starting in leadership pipelines,” but they are dropping out of that pipeline before they get to the top. She encourages young couples to have serious conversations about how they define gender equality in a long-term relationship.

The panel’s themes tie into Hallstein’s fall 2016 class Cultural Constructions of Motherhood, which will examine how motherhood is understood today, and how expectations and assumptions shape what counts as both “good” and “bad” mothering.