Wednesday, March 18, 2015 // The Statement
6B

Women in Leadership Lessons

fosters necessary conversations for young professionals

by Natalie Gadbois, Deputy Statement Editor

T

he statistics are well-worn but still concerning:
women comprise only 4.6 percent of Fortune 500
CEOs. Only 9 percent of the top 250 films released

in 2012 were directed by women. The contentious pay gap
— argued by many as an effect of environmental choices
rather than institutionalized sexism — does exist, with
women making only 77 cents for every dollar their male
counterparts earn.

It can be a murky world out there for women, particu-

larly those with professional ambitions. However, there
are resources for young women hoping to move forward
in their careers. The Business School offers a longstand-
ing club called the Michigan Busi-
ness Women, and, in the past year,
a chapter of Lean In — the national
non-profit organization dedicated
to promoting equality for women —
was introduced at the University.

For women in the LSA Organi-

zational Studies program, Women
in Leadership Lessons — otherwise
known as WiLL —fosters the com-
plex conversations women need
to have when considering their
futures.

The
Organizational
Studies

major, a competitive program com-
bining disciplines such as psychol-
ogy, sociology and economics, hosts
a wide range of students, from those
pursuing consulting and non-profit
work to environmentalism, public
health, and marketing. WiLL was
founded seven years ago as an OS
group by professors and students
who saw a need to support women
as they began to enter their various
workforces.

Originally, the club was relatively

unstructured, focusing on a few
capstone events a year. Last year
current LSA senior Jenna Fiore saw
a new potential in the informal club,
and she restructured it to build it into a support system
with weekly meetings alongside the larger events.

“The group was really small and I wanted to revitalize

it, so I registered it as a formal group on campus, wrote
a constitution, got a faculty advisor from OS,” Fiore said.

The group is still small — around twenty-one official

members — but this smaller atmosphere contributes to
the intimate camaraderie and support found at the weekly
meetings.

***

It’s 9:00 a.m. on a Tuesday, and girls are shuffling in

one by one to the Sophia B. Jones room at the Michigan
Union. Quiet conversation ranges from Spring Break trips
to upcoming group projects to advice on how to find sum-
mer housing. Fiore begins the meeting with an icebreaker:
the usual highs and lows of the week and spring break
highlights, plus one question unique to this organization:
“Who is your female role model?”

As the ten or girls go around, their answers are varied

— some say their mothers, others mention public leaders
like Malala Yousafzai and Michelle Obama, others jok-

ingly cite fictional characters like Julia from “Parenthood”
— but there is a collective warmth as the conversation
develops around inspiring women. It’s small, supportive
gestures like this that show WiLL’s value, something that
incoming club president Grace Fisher, an LSA junior, was
initially drawn to.

“We are able to share our experiences in terms of intern-

ships and give each other some recommendations, and
help each other in a more professional capacity,” Fisher
said. “But we also are able to have real conversations about
women in the workforce.”

WiLL holds resume, salary negotiation, and LinkedIn

workshops and hosts guest speakers addressing their
paths as women in the workforce — all ways to educate
members on how to navigate male-dominated spaces suc-
cessfully. However, each week the group also discusses
the broader social implications for working women by
reading feminist articles and watching TED talks from
speakers like Sheryl Sandburg, Chief Operating Officer of
Facebook and author of “Lean In.” It’s this combination of
goals — both to assist women in a still unequal world and
directly address the problematic structures women face
— that club adviser Sara Soderstrom thinks makes WiLL
so empowering.

“Some of (WiLL) has been focused on those individual

skills that women can develop to navigate (the workforce),
and other parts have been thinking more broadly,” said
Soderstrom, an assistant professor in OS and Program in
the Environment. “What are some of the types of changes
that we would like to see? How can we see them through?”

This multifaceted approach allows the group to be

positive and supportive while still recognizing the issues
women face, an aspect that was really important to Fiore.

“It’s easy to see WiLL as ‘Oh, women have all these chal-

lenges in the workforce, you need to discuss how to over-
come them,’ but it’s not really just about that because it’s
not straightforward like that,” she said. “There are other
things, regardless of gender, issues that can come up and
you want to be able to talk about them.”

WiLL is in many ways a focused contribution to the

increasingly widespread public discussion about women
in the workforce. Both Fiore and Fisher recognize that the
environment women face today is vastly different than the
one women a generation before encountered.

The popularity of movements like Lean In or actress

Amy Poehler’s “Smart Girls at the
Party” — an online women’s advo-
cacy forum — show that gender
inequality is at the foreground of
the zeitgeist now more than ever.
Soderstrom reflects this, admitting
that as an Engineering undergrad-
uate she didn’t fully understand
the idea of gender inequality and
misrepresentation.

“I was naïve to a lot of it,” Sod-

erstrom said. “With engineering,
everything was so much focused
on ‘how do you solve these prob-
lems?’ There is a right answer and a
wrong answer … Not as much about
the social navigation side. So I
found myself recognizing the num-
bers piece, but not thinking about
social dynamics side of gender in
the workplace.”

Soderstrom
applauded
the

actions of the women in WiLL to
proactively
educate
themselves

about the future they face. Beyond
the weekly meetings, on March
31 the organization is also host-
ing a public panel, titled “WiLL
Presents: Working Women,” that
will be open to students across all
majors and disciplines. This panel

will feature four women from the Ann Arbor area — repre-
senting the Center for Education of Women, the Ann Arbor
Community Foundation, the Conservation League of Vot-
ers, and the Ann Arbor Google office — as they answer
questions about their careers, the obstacles they faced and
the accomplishments they had.

Fiore hopes this event will provide insight for college-

aged women as to what they can expect entering the work-
force, which is why they focused on bringing in a wide
range of speakers.

“We tried to bring in people with different areas of

expertise, at different places in their careers,” she said.

Though WiLL is still reserved for OS students, both

Fisher and Fiore hope that this flagship event will be a use-
ful resource for women on campus as they begin to figure
out what they want to do with the rest of their lives.

WiLL’s goal is ultimately to empower women to be lead-

ers in whatever path they choose, recognizing current
obstacles but providing the support and the confidence to
allow women to jump over them. To get to a place where
female leadership is not the exception but the norm.

LUNA ARCHEY/DAILY