Subtitle: Conversations with Powerful Women
Editor: Mary S. Hartman
Subject: Women's Studies/Business
Paperback ISBN 0-8135-2560-8
Pages: 304 pp., 13 b&w photos
Description: Conversations with 13 outstanding women "practitioners" of leadership from a variety of fields each of whom came to the conclusion that the world needed to change, and part of the job was up to her.

Talking Leadership presents an impressive and thought-provoking look at variation and commonality in the lives and leadership approaches of some of today's outstanding women, whose fields range from philanthropy to politics, and from business to academia. Regardless of their different backgrounds and areas of expertise, these women are united in a commitment to positive change - change that includes improving women's lives and options.

This book encourages readers to expand their definition of who a "leader" is and can be. In addition to occupants of formal positions on the upper rungs of major institutions, it urges the inclusion of those whose ability to influence and move people is expressed through teaching, writing, or taking action in arenas-whether local or global-that include neighborhood communities and even family households. The women in Talking Leadership were selected not only for their impressive achievements but for their willingness to offer candid and thoughtful assessments of their experiences in leadership - the costs as well as the rewards, the strategies that worked and those that failed.

Well beyond the undeniable pleasures of personal details and entertaining anecdotes, these conversations capture for readers a variety of images, experiences, approaches, strategies, and insights about what it is like to be a woman and a major leader at the close of the 20th century. Many of these women are "firsts" in their fields, and each is aware that she occupies space in her work life in which her womanhood sets her apart - more often in more uncomfortable ways than comfortable ones. On the eve of a new millenium, the book presents an image of how far women have come in leadership, and how far they have to go.

Mary S. Hartman is a University Professor and Director of the Institute for Women's Leadership at Douglass College, Rutgers University. She is a former dean of Douglass College.

The leaders featured in this book

Peggy Antrobus - prize-winning economist and founding director of the Women and Development Unit at the University of the West Indies.

Susan Berresford - first woman president of the Ford Foundation.

Mildred Dresselhaus - first tenured woman faculty member in the engineering school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; 1990 National Medal of Science winner.

Antonia Hernandez - President and General Counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the most influential civil rights and advocacy organization for Latinos and Latinas in the U. S.

bell hooks - distinguished professor of English, City University, New York; author of numerous books, including Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self Recovery and Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism.

Lois Juliber - Executive Vice President and chief of operations for developing markets at Colgate-Palmolive Company.

Karen Nussbaum - Director, Working Women's Department, the first women's unit within the AFL-CIO; former director of the U.S. Women's Bureau; founder of "9 to 5."

Jacqueline Pitanguy - former president of Brazil's National Council for Women's Rights; director of a women's advocacy organization; holder of Brazil's highest decoration from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Anna Quindlen - Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, best-selling author, and social critic; only the third woman in New York Times history to write a regular column for the Op-Ed page.

Nafis Sadik - Executive director, United Nations Population Fund; the first woman to head a major United Nations program.

Patricia Schroeder - twenty-four-year Democratic Congresswoman; President and C.E.O., Association of American Publishers.

Ruth Simmons - first African American and third woman president of Smith College.

Christine Todd Whitman - First woman governor of New Jersey.

From Talking Leadership:

"I think a lot of it (my leadership style) has to do with being a woman, just because we learn early on to balance a lot of demands. Women do have a different set of life experiences and expectations. We remain the primary caregivers, whether it's for our parents or a sibling or a husband or a child; and if something goes wrong it's likely to be the woman who's expected to be there. So you learn to balance a lot of things and keep a lot of balls in the air; and I think you also learn to compromise. Because of those demands of keeping so many things going at the same time, you also learn you can't do it all."-Christine Todd Whitman

"We have tended to think leadership comes first and that the work that needs to be done comes later, rather than first imagining the work that needs to be done and the individuals best suited to do it. If we did that, we would have better models of leadership."-bell hooks

"Leadership is having vision, having energy, . . . having a game plan, choosing the right people, giving the organization a lot of room but being there, having that sixth sense to know when they're in trouble and being there to pick them up, slap them on the back and send them off on their way again."-Lois Juliber