Community

Connecting Women Leaders to Accelerate Positive Change

Last week, a video featuring Muffet McGraw, the championship-winning coach of the Notre Dame women’s basketball team, talking about the slow progress towards women's equality went viral. She’s sick and tired and not going to take it anymore. Aren’t we all?
Pat Mitchell

Pat Mitchell

6 Min Read

Last week, Muffet McGraw, the championship-winning coach of the Notre Dame women’s basketball team was celebrating her team’s victory, but in the post-game press conference with reporters, she got serious when a reporter asked her about being the “voice” of female coaches in college athletics and specifically her policy to never hire another male coach on her staff.

Her two-minute response, which went viral, broke down a lifetime of waiting for true equality for women beginning with the (still unratified) 1967 Equal Rights Amendment, 1972’s Title IX and on and on.

She’s sick and tired and, not going to take it anymore. Aren’t we all?

Watch her video:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Coach <a href="https://twitter.com/MuffetMcGraw?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MuffetMcGraw</a> has always been about empowering women.<br><br>Today was no different.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GoIrish?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#GoIrish</a> <a href="https://t.co/yOiwwFBS65">pic.twitter.com/yOiwwFBS65</a></p>— Notre Dame WBB (@ndwbb) <a href="https://twitter.com/ndwbb/status/1113873325015609345?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 4, 2019</a></blockquote>
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

“I’m getting tired of the novelty of … the first female governor of this state. The first female African-American mayor of this city,” she said. “When is it going to become the norm instead of the exception? How are these young women looking up and seeing someone that looks like them, preparing them for the future? We don’t have enough female role models. We don’t have enough visible women leaders. We don’t have enough women in power.”

WHERE WE ARE

Some of the women of the House in 116th Congress (Credit: © Stefani Reynols)

We all know the numbers. As McGraw noted, in the US, women make up only 24% of Congress, 18% of governors and, as of February 2019, only 21% of mayors. In business, less than 5% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women and women comprise only 22% of Fortune 500 boards. Globally, women account for about 6% of the total number of heads of state and less than a quarter (24%) of senior roles in business.To address the complexity of today’s problems, a rebalance in global leadership is needed in every sector. From shifting populations, violent conflicts and threats of terrorism, a global climate crisis, and worsening economic inequity, women leaders are increasingly on the front line of our world’s greatest challenges. Many are shaping innovative solutions to these and other complex global challenges as transformative leaders, but more are needed.

WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP FORUM

This month, in partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation, I’m convening a leadership forum at the Rockefeller conference center in Bellagio, Italy. Along with Ronda Carnegie, one of the TEDWomen co-founders, we are gathering a group of women leaders from all over the world on the front lines of change in culture, media, business, social enterprises and government. It’s the second gathering of the Women’s Leadership Summit, the first was held in 2017.

In that first gathering of global women leaders, we agreed on the attributes needed to be a transformative change leader. We strategized how to apply these attributes to bring forward new solutions to the climate crisis, the threats of rising populism and growing economic inequities as well as reviewing the role for women leaders in strengthening human security, shaping sustainable peace and identifying new solutions to shifting populations.

Motivated by the need to build a new collective movement towards shared learning and better solutions, we convened 28 women leaders from 17 countries in July 2017, at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in Italy for the Inaugural Global Women Leaders Summit, in partnership with the Skoll Foundation, The Carter Center, the Council of Women World Leaders and Apolitical.

Some of the recommendations resulting from that Bellagio forum have been implemented, and the connections, personally and professionally, have been sustained. While a core group of the first forum’s leaders are returning, we will grow the global community of women leaders with new participants for the 2019 forum convening in Bellagio on April 23.

WHEN WOMEN LEAD

We know that when women lead, organizations are more collaborative and sustainable;businesses do better from every measurement, and governments and communities tend to be more caring, compassionate and just. So why do we need to activate and connect women leaders?

Connected women leaders will leverage their constituencies, communities and networks and accelerate progress towards full equality.

WHERE WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Pay equity. Many of you may have tweeted about #EqualPayDay, which this year fell on April 2. It’s the day that represents the average number of days American women must work into a new year to achieve the same pay that white men accrued the year before. Researchers say that if we continue at the slow pace pay equity has progressed over the past 50 years, it will take another 40 years — or until 2059 — for women to finally reach pay parity. For women of color, the rate of change is even slower: Hispanic women will have to wait until 2224 and Black women will wait until 2119 for equal pay.

Political parity. According to researchers, women won’t reach parity in electoral politics until 2121. The Washington Post notes this is the same year that others predict humans will set up colonies on the moon.

Boardroom parity. The share of women sitting on the boards of Fortune 500 companies has more than doubled in the past 20 years, rising from a paltry 10% in 1995 to 22% in 2017. Fabrizio Freda, president and CEO of the Estée Lauder Companies, told McKinsey Quarterly that the conviction is there, but the sense of urgency isn’t: “People believe we are going to get there eventually. But that is not enough; it’s too slow. The real obstacle is the lack of urgency.” It needs to be intentional and there needs to be a plan.

So how do we supercharge the change that needs to happen? 

I believe there is great potential in leveraging and further activating the networks, communities and constituencies of women represented at the Bellagio forum and around the world. I look forward to sharing the outcomes and recommendations that move us all towards a reality that Coach McGraw expressed impatience for — when women leading anywhere and everywhere is the norm and not the exception. And one in which women leaders (and men who stand with us) are working together for the benefit of all.

Onward!
— Pat

Author(s)

  • Pat Mitchell

    Pat Mitchell is a lifelong advocate for women and girls. At every step of her career, Mitchell has broken new ground for women, leveraging the power of media as a journalist, an Emmy award-winning and Oscar-nominated producer to tell women’s stories and increase the representation of women onscreen and off. Transitioning to an executive role, she became the president of CNN Productions, and the first woman president and CEO of PBS and the Paley Center for Media. Today, her commitment to connect and strengthen a global community of women leaders continues as a conference curator, advisor and mentor. In partnership with TED, Mitchell launched TEDWomen in 2010 and is its editorial director, curator and host. She is also a speaker and curator for the annual Women Working for the World forum in Bogota, Colombia, the Her Village conference in Beijing, and the Women of the World (WOW) festival in London. In 2017, she launched the Transformational Change Leadership Initiative with the Rockefeller Foundation focused on women leaders in government and civil society. In 2014, the Women’s Media Center honored Mitchell with its first-annual Lifetime Achievement Award, now named in her honor to commend other women whose media careers advance the representation of women. Recognized by Hollywood Reporter as one of the most powerful women in media, Fast Company’s “League of Extraordinary Women” and Huffington Post’s list of “Powerful Women Over 50,” Mitchell also received the Sandra Day O'Connor Award for Leadership. She is a contributor to Enlightened Power: How Women Are Transforming the Practice of Leadership, and wrote the introduction to the recently published book and museum exhibition, 130 Women of Impact in 30 Countries. In 2016, she served as a congressional appointment to The American Museum of Women’s History Advisory Council. She is writing a memoir, Becoming a Dangerous Woman: Embracing a Life of Power and Purpose, that will be published in 2019. Mitchell is active with many nonprofit organizations, serving as the chair of the boards of the Sundance Institute and the Women’s Media Center. She is a founding member of the VDAY movement and on the boards of the Skoll Foundation and the Acumen Fund. She is also an advisor to Participant Media and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mitchell is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Georgia and holds a master's degree in English literature and several honorary doctorate degrees. She and her husband, Scott Seydel, live in Atlanta and have six children and 13 grandchildren.