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