J Dent Educ. 68(7_suppl): 60-62 2004
© 2004 American Dental Education Association
Leadership Paths to the Future |
Women Leading Change: The Case for Oral Health
Lois K. Cohen, Ph.D.
At a recent annual session of Executive Women in Government, I had a very special experience listening to one of the keynote speakers, Dr. Laura Liswood of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. As she talked about her interviews with women world leaders, I was struck by the words some of her interviewees used about their personal experiences, values, accomplishment, joys, tragedies, and mistakes. Isn’t it remarkable that we can all see ourselves in the stories of these world leaders who come from a variety of places and ethnic origins—whether European, African, or Asian, whether Muslim, Buddhist, Protestant, or Catholic? We sense that gender issues know few national borders and truly are of global significance.
The thoughts of those women prime ministers and presidents brought me closer to thinking about basic issues of concern in the oral health field: whether women rise to leadership in dental education, research, or service and, if so, what are the factors that are most important in becoming a woman leading change in our field. Liswood focused on four themes in her work: 1) path to power, 2) leadership styles, 3) leadership experiences, and 4) women and power. Let’s look at these universally relevant themes in relation to some of her examples as well as women leaders in the oral health fields of education, research, and service.
 |
Path to Power
|
|---|
In 1986, Corazon Aquino found herself elected president of the Philippines following her husband’s assassination. In fact those of us who attended the FDI Congress in Manila heard her open the congress during her very first week in office. After that, she left for Japan and her first foreign visit, causing palace security in Manila to be stepped up for fear of a coup d’état during her absence. However, Aquino was not overthrown, and she succeeded in large measure because of her leadership style.
Others came to leadership power because of a strong family background in politics. Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, a physician, then prime minister of Norway, and today the immediate past director general of the World Health Organization, is one example. Still others aspired to change some aspect of the broader society—having experienced a strong desire to care for others and make this a state responsibility.
In the realm of oral health, it is not difficult to envision women who are in the right place at the right time, beside a male leader, apprenticing formally or informally, then stepping in to fill a position as dental dean, vice president of an academic health centers, research institute director, or president of a dental association. When those women have the opportunity to shine, some wind up being selected to succeed incumbent males in those roles. We know of these cases, though we also know of cases where they were in the applicant pool as token females and were never seriously considered as permanent or tenured selections.
Fortunately, we have wonderful examples of such successful women as Dr. Dushanka Kleinman, who had the privilege of understudying three National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research directors and who successfully rose to become the first female Chief Dental Officer of the U.S. Public Health Service. Likewise, Dr. Jeanne Sinkford became the first female U.S. dental school dean, having understudied Joe Henry at Howard University, and has since redoubled her leadership to advance the careers of women and minorities at the American Dental Education Association.
|
Leadership Styles
|
|---|
Margaret Thatcher, former prime minister of Great Britain, is well known for having had an assertive style. Thatcher learned to be organized, of independent judgment, able to take responsibility with a firm sense of security and confidence. Oh, how we can think of women in our own lives with that level of assertiveness and authoritarian certitude! Cory Aquino put it well when she said that presidents are not expected to be polite.
But all of the women in Liswood’s study attested to having more typical women’s leadership styles: less hierarchical than men, more enabling, more open, more participatory, more interested in details, more humane in style, preferring consensus, using personal examples, and being a team leader. Dame Margaret Seward epitomizes the best of those women’s leadership styles, and it is no wonder that she was a successful leader among men in dental education in the UK, in dental associations, as editor of national and international journals, in dental governance as head of the British Dental Council, and most recently as the Chief Dental Officer for the UK. She competed against males but she did it with grace in the tradition so well articulated by these women world leaders.
|
Leadership Experiences
|
|---|
Women don’t have to cheat and lie, said one of Liswood’s interviewees, implying that men usually do. But women can ill afford to make mistakes either, for when they do, they will experience criticism of themselves, rather than their politics. Women seem to be afraid of being judged as they come from a marginalized position and in leadership positions they tend to move to the center. These days, of course, most male leaders of right or left political positions, once in office, tend to move to the center to keep all sides just a little satisfied. In thinking about women who have risen to become president of their national dental associations, I can think of one in my own country (and we only had one in all of the history of the American Dental Association). And some criticized her as being a person who had to see how the territory was before making decisions. This was viewed as waffling or indecisive behavior and weakness—regardless of the wisdom of the ultimate decision.
Indeed, some women world leaders have suggested that women have to do it better, be more methodical, think ahead, and appear therefore to make decisions quickly. We as leaders in families—balancing work and family life—are planners and evaluators, and we can use that to our advantage to advance strategic thinking in our organizations. The issues for heads of state apply equally to heads of academic units, schools, associations, clinically oriented organizations. I am reminded of a colleague who is an accomplished behavioral science researcher in dentistry who had apprenticed in a provost’s office and mastered academic administration skills. She even served as dean of a school of architecture before becoming president of a major Midwestern state university system. Her experience staying in a leadership role is a case study of balancing politics, administrative skills, and the need to shatter the image of a woman as an interloper in a man’s world.
|
Women and Power
|
|---|
I am struck by the willingness of women leaders in the health professions to take power. In recent years, in the United States there has been an effort to identify patient advocacy organizations that might take on the task of lobbying legislators and policy-makers about resource allocation for health afflictions like ectodermal dysplasia, Sjögren’s Syndrome, diabetes, and cleft lip and palate that have oral health impact. Many of these groups are led by mothers, sisters, and daughters of patients with these diseases/ conditions, and they have been most effective in providing testimony to Congress, actively reaching out to new publics never reached by male leaders in dentistry. Their potential for power is enormous and hasn’t really been captured for its full potential either in the United States or in many other nations.
As men relinquish power, either because they have moved on to other interests or because women have "done them better," to use a vernacular expression, women’s power to lead is evident in fields such as dental public health. Observe women in the leadership of the European Association for Dental Public Health and its counterpart in the United States. I would imagine a global survey of ministries of health might reveal a growing proportion of women in those oral health leadership positions. Perhaps public health is popular because it lends itself to part-time employment possibilities, job-sharing, and a substantial focus on prevention (which appeals to mothers), and it is more welcoming to those hoping to reenter the labor force after a period of absence associated with family responsibilities. It would be interesting to look at pediatric dentistry or even orthodontics to see if those specialties are experiencing changing gender demographics and, if so, whether leadership opportunities are changing concomitantly.
Finally, I want to mention dental auxiliary occupations, which are peopled primarily by women across the globe. Someone pointed out to me that dental hygienists are accepted as full members of the American Dental Public Health Association but not by the American Dental Association. I would guess that there must be a major group of women dentists (nonmembers of the ADA) who began their lives as hygienists. Were there lessons of lost leadership opportunities for dental hygiene, because of a lack of career ladder opportunities? Who will study these issues and others related to gender and health if not women?
In closing, my thoughts about the case for oral health are that we must create for ourselves a collaborative environment. We should be good at that because we are naturally data-sharers and we tend to believe that information and knowledge are to be viewed as public goods. We need to set for ourselves a sense of urgency about the need for more and better leaders, many of whom should be women. We could create a powerful coalition that would create a guiding vision for ideal characteristics in leadership in oral health. That coalition could set itself up to remove obstacles that block access to leadership experiences. Once those victories begin to occur, the changes need to be anchored in the distinct organizational cultures.
I posit that we have too few good leaders, women or men, but we need to systematically create opportunities to mentor young leaders, particularly women, as we strive for equality of opportunity. At the same time, we can show them that the oral health world at least could be different and could even be better with women’s styles of leadership.
|
Footnotes
|
|---|
Dr. Cohen is Associate Director for International Health and Director, Office of International Health, National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, National Institutes of Health, Natcher 45, 4AS13, 45 Center Drive, MSC 6401, Bethesda, MD 20892-6401; 301-594-7710 phone; 301-402-7033 fax; Lois.Cohen{at}nih.gov.
Top
Path to power
Leadership styles
