How to Move the Needle

Despite progress in many areas, women in higher education still face more challenges than men. Twenty-eight percent of women working at US colleges and universities report that they have been passed over for a promotion or other professional opportunity due to their gender, according to a 2021 Gallup survey. Research also shows that women in academia are paid less than men, are less likely to attain tenure, and perform a disproportionate amount of unpaid service work.

As the keynote speaker at the Women’s Leadership Breakfast at the 2024 annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), journalist and author Kelly Corrigan talked about how women in academia can overcome such challenges. Women need to transcend these realities and hold each other up, Corrigan advised. To successfully traverse obstacles in their path, they need guidance from mentors and practical advice on topics ranging from how to ask for a promotion to learning when and why to say no.

In the following conversation with Liberal Education, Corrigan discusses the importance of college and university leadership positions, the need for more women at the table, and her message for young women as they establish themselves in the world.

What’s your advice for how women should approach the challenges of leadership positions?

It can be very helpful to have a colleague or a mentor to work through the specifics of your organization and your circumstances. This person can help you figure out the next right move and come up with a plan that’s oriented toward the situation you’re in. There’s a lot of energy in successful people—we should perceive older people who can mentor individuals who are in their early career or mid-career as valuable resources.

How would you describe your own approach to leadership and its challenges?

I experimented with a lot of leadership positions as an undergraduate at the University of Richmond. It was the first time I tried running a few things. I liked it so much that once I got into regular jobs with the standard hierarchies, I kind of chomped at the bit because I still wanted to be in charge. I learned that it suits me to be in an entrepreneurial position.

I like being the master of my domain. I like being responsible for myself and my success. I like representing myself. I like advocating for my work. I find it satisfying to succeed or fail based on my 
own choices.

What’s an example of a leadership position you held in college?

I helped run a hundred-mile bike race as a fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity. We raised enough money to build several houses in Richmond, Virginia. This was a great experience because I went through the entire process from having a fun idea to dealing with various details and challenges, like the day we realized we needed an insurance permit to move all the cars on campus and seventy-five volunteers on the course to manage everything. This experience helped me appreciate the reams of detail that either make or break a live event.

What’s the long-term value of holding college or university student leadership positions?

College is a relatively easy place to try out leadership roles. There are so many organizations, large and small, that you could try running for a year or for a semester. It’s essential to try to run something as soon as you can. There are things you can only learn when you’re in charge. If you can do it in college, that’s great. If you didn’t run anything in college—get cracking because there’s no book to teach you how to learn some things.

In conversations about women and leadership, the theme of work-life balance frequently comes up. Is this more of an issue for women than for men?

It’s probably more of an issue for women than men. In most families I know, when an aging parent is sick, the adult daughter often gets somewhat more involved than the son. Similarly, in many families, when a child gets sick, usually the mother is more involved in the care than the father. Therefore, I think there will always be more demands on women than there are on men.

That said, sometimes women demand to have a bigger role in caretaking. They don’t trust the men to do the caretaking the way they want it done and would rather do it themselves. Nonetheless, that still means a woman will have a harder time than a man balancing her job with taking care of the people she loves.

At the Women’s Leadership Breakfast at AAC&U’s 2024 annual meeting, you said that “realistically we’ve suffered a setback” in reference to the then recent resignations of Elizabeth Magill as president of the University of Pennsylvania and Claudine Gay as president of Harvard University. Please say more about this.

When there are very few of one type of person at the table and then something happens to that one person, it reflects on the whole unfairly. There are fewer female college presidents, so when a female president makes a mistake, it unfortunately becomes a stand-in for the whole. 

If you’re the only woman at the table, if you’re the only Brown person at the table, if you’re the only Black person at the table, if you’re the only person at the table who’s in a wheelchair, if you’re the only person at the table who has children, if you’re the only person at the table who’s gay, you become a stand-in for all the people of that type. Until there are more people of different identities at the table, each individual is at risk of becoming an overrepresentation of their identity group, their gender, their race, their class, or their sexuality.

More broadly, I believe the overturning of Roe v. Wade was a reversal of progress that has implications for women in the workplace. It’s also a meta statement about what can and cannot be taken away. It turns out that things we thought were settled are not—rights that we thought were enshrined are not. If that doesn’t put you on edge, you’re not paying attention to the realities around you.

If you were speaking to a smart, motivated fourteen- or fifteen-year-old girl right now who’s been paying attention to what’s going on and is feeling discouraged, what would you say to her?

Take yourself seriously. My mom’s parents, despite having money, did not send my mom to college. Their attitude was “You’re probably just going to get married. College is a lot of money. What’s the point?”

My parents automatically saved for college for me. I didn’t have to convince them that I was worthy of college, but I didn’t take myself seriously during and after college. I did not get into the real swing of things until I was thirty-eight. My first book came out when I was forty. I wish I had taken myself more seriously from the start—so that’s what I tell my daughters to do. They are planning to take up space in the world and have influence.

I hope a fourteen-year-old girl imagines herself and her friends in all the places where a fourteen-year-old boy imagines himself and his friends. There are fourteen-year-old girls who run for class president, but by the time they’re twenty-four, they abdicate power to men. Something happens in those ten years. Instead, I want women to say, “That’s nuts. I’m going to stay in the conversation. I’m going to participate as fully in the world as a man would.” I want a fourteen-year-old girl to assume that’s her path.

You’ve spoken about the problematic messages women give themselves about their qualifications and not taking credit for their work. How did you come to recognize this phenomenon? What are the underlying causes of this, and how can we counteract them?

Women still bear a heavy burden of graciousness—and the culture around graciousness is much stronger than the culture around taking credit where credit is due. Women also often want to be liked at some level. Women need to ask, “How much do I want that? Do I want to be liked more than I want a promotion? Do I want it more than I want the right paycheck or the right bonus?” 

Many women in my generation tolerated a lot because we didn’t want to make waves, and we didn’t want to be perceived as a headache. That needs to change.