3 Women On Nurturing Diverse Leadership: A Needed Cultural Shift in National Security

The team at GenderAvenger has been paying close attention to policy and the composition of leadership as a new administration plans to enter the White House in 2021. Earlier this week, Arizona State University’s Center on the Future of War hosted a virtual event, “Diversity in National Security: How to Ensure More Women Hold Leadership Positions”, to examine gender diversity in the United States’ sprawling national security ecosystem, which encompasses everything from the military to the state department to think tanks. 

Featuring three women with illustrious track records in national security, they both discussed the positive transformation they have seen over the years and expressed concern about recent backsliding on women’s representation in several relevant sectors.

Heather Hurlburt. Photo credit: New America [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Heather Hurlburt, Director of New America’s New Models of Policy Change and a former senior staffer in the White House and Department of State, had this to say:

None of us is all that young, our lifetimes encompass married women being allowed to serve in the Foreign Service for the first time, women being allowed to go into the service academies. Most of the jobs in the military, many opening up to women for the first time, women reaching the same levels as men in undergraduate and graduate enrollment in this field in the pipeline, the first woman Secretary of State, the first women running a think tank… That is a story of amazing promise and success, but we also see real stagnation and even backwards movement in women's representation in senior levels at the State Department and a really dramatic backwards move for people of color and particularly women of color at the State Department. We've seen pressure recently to move women out of some of the jobs and career specialties that they had recently gotten access to in the military.

There are several factors at work, but culture plays a huge role. The military, long dominated by men, has been particularly set in its ways in this respect, according to Jeannette Haynie, a former Marine Corps officer and Founder and Executive Director of the Athena Leadership Project: 

One of the things that it took me a long time to understand was the way the culture was set up in the military. It taught me and my fellow female service members instinctively to push away from each other and to isolate ourselves to be like one of the guys… and what that did is that kept the culture where it was and kept progress from moving forward. And it is not to blame me or us… it was a natural response, but we also have to be aware of it, learn about what the culture teaches us to do, and figure out ways to push back and educate ourselves.

Laura Kupe. Photo credit: Brookings Institution [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0], via Flickr.

Counsel on the Committee on Homeland Security, former Special Assistant at the Department of Homeland Security, and Youth Ambassador for Women of Color Advancing Peace, Security, and Conflict Transformation, Laura Kupe, suggested a role for Congress in facilitating change and holding the armed services accountable, as well as an opportunity for the private sector to exert outside pressure: “Other sectors are doing a much better job in this realm so hopefully we can also get private sector entities to push government to do better.”

Hurlburt added:

We know from other fields that there’s social science involved in how to do this – not just open the doors but change the institution, so that members of different groups can thrive. But interestingly, the national security field turns out to be really profoundly ‘small c’ conservative and things that are pretty standard now in business and the private sector are still a little bit of a shock in the national security field.

In addition to examining the ingrained culture in the national security field and pushing for outside interventions, we also must recognize that people lead lives outside of work:

Haynie shared that:

It's about being able to actually live the lives that we have beyond work, and with work. If someone is looking for a cookie cutter way to change manpower structures or career paths to fit a broader mold, there really isn't going to be one. It's going to come down to empathy, getting to know who the people you lead are, their strengths, their vulnerabilities, their problems, and how to lead with them, nurture them, and help them ascend the ranks and make an impact.

That’s great advice for any sector seeking a culture change in order to welcome and retain women and women of color in leadership… and, most importantly, give them the opportunity to make their voices heard.