Women’s History Month: A Fine and Long Tradition of Community Leadership

by Chaplain (MAJ) Karen J. Diefendorf
Speech presented to the staff and faculty of the Chaplain School to mark Women's History Month, 1998.

A leader is defined in various ways. Most of you know someone who fits one of these definitions:

• the blank section at the start of a reel of film or recording tape
• an economic indicator that tends to foretell a change in the economy
• a short length of gut or wire that attaches a hook to a fishing line
• the main newspaper editorial
• the foremost horse in a harnessed team
• one that leads or guides
• one who has power or influence

FM 22-100, Army Leadership, says that leadership is "the process of influencing others to accomplish the mission by providing purpose, direction, and motivation."  

One of the reasons for having a Women’s History Month is to remind us of the women we have known or have never learned about who were/are leaders.  I, quite frankly, wish we didn’t have to have an observance like this; that when we said leader we thought of persons.  And we all know that the Army’s goal in this is to aid us to think more broadly.  Most of us will do that as we work around women who are leaders.

I’ve known people who thought that a woman leader was in fact a blank piece of lead tape — not good for anything.  The amazing part of this is that the people who believed it were often other women.  And yet, that blank piece of leader tape has an important role.

 But we HAVE been around leaders, women leaders, all of our lives.  They didn’t fit our culture’s definition so we didn’t always recognize what they were doing as leadership.  They weren’t making big CEO dollars and, being a materialistic culture, we defined good leadership in terms of the GNP and Wall Street.

They weren’t making the news because no one thought what they did was that newsworthy.  They weren’t being granted MBAs, yet they were managing households and schedules that would qualify any one of them to be USACHCS course designers/developers.

They could be elementary teachers or nurses but not high school physics teachers or doctors.  There was a time when they could be elementary teachers but only as long as they were unmarried.  As soon as they married, not even if their husband didn’t mind, they could not continue teaching.

I don’t want to get into a long historical overview of how the women’s movement rose and declined and rose and declined in our society, but I do understand quite personally the sense of injustice and rage that comes with someone saying uninformed things like, "women don’t think logically."  Or when, just because I was female, I couldn’t play.  I knew I would be chosen last out on the baseball field and I accepted that as the price I would have to pay just to get to play.  But I always wondered — who made up these rules anyway, especially when I could play better than about half of the boys.  

Women were taught to be very careful of hurting a man’s fragile ego.  Funny isn’t it, that the strong, unemotional man was in need of protection.  No one seemed aware of the irony of it (or at least nobody talked of it — for fear talking about it would make it real).  Maybe that is why I remember the women sitting on one side of a room and men on the other.  Why can’t we just be people who are vulnerable, who need each other?

But Women's Hisotry Month is not about the constant jockeying for who gets what, man or woman.  It is about honestly remembering women leaders.

I like FM 22-100’s definition.  It surprised me when I came to the Chaplain Officer Basic Course 11 years ago that the Army valued egalitarian leadership.  I had this preconceived notion that the Army would want authoritarian leaders, "manly men."  But I really liked the adulthood, the maturity of defining leadership as influence, not control.

Think with me about women you have known who influenced you.

While your thinking about that, let me tell you a "Bradley" story.  I know you think I cannot speak without telling Bradley stories and its not that I couldn’t tell Amanda and Ashley or Walter stories but they would be mortified if I did!

One weekend we had company from the church I pastored for ten years.  The couple, who had been kids in the youth group are now married with children of their own.  Their boys are 10 and 8 and my son who is 4 were playing together.  Now you need to know that my son, Bradley, is working on a critical developmental task — sharing.   So he has had lots of influence in his life.  The other boys each wanted the same toy and I expected to hear from Bradley, "No, neither of you get it.  It’s mine."  Instead I heard, "Noah, could Wesley play with that toy?" and Noah replied, "No, not right now.  I want to play with it."  Bradley looked at Wesley, and said, "Isn’t that so sad."

I heard my mother’s influence right then.  Those were not Bradley’s inspired words.  Those were my mother’s words right down to the tone of voice.

That is leadership — the ability to influence a person toward the goal the leader wants accomplished.

Now who are the women you remember?  Who ran the PTAs and PTOs that bought hundreds of dollars of needed things for your schools — that the board of trustees (mostly or all men) kept cutting?  

Who taught you to read? to write? to add and subtract?  Of course, those aren’t very important skills are they?

What about that woman in your place of worship who always made you feel welcome — who valued you as a person — who did not exclude you just because you were not as smart or as pretty or handsome or as well-dressed as some of the others.

For many of us, it was a woman who gave us the gift of faith.  For many of you, it has been your wife or mother who has been your leader in some areas.

Perhaps it’s hard for you to think of women as leaders because you think of it as exercising "direct power or influence."  One of the interesting things about power is that if a person is told they have no power, they will demonstrate the most powerful power — passive or passive-aggressive power, sometimes called manipulation.  Oh, now I see some faces light up and some wheels turn.  People manipulate because they don’t believe they have the right to ask directly or because they cannot face the word "no" as a possibility.

An observance like this is important because it gives all of us permission to be direct.  Our relationships, whether personal or professional, will be much better if we can simply be who we are and be direct.

I am a woman leader.  I am privileged to work with other leaders, both women and men.  We are all privileged to be here because we are all encouraged to be direct and to develop our leadership skills.  

Take today to think about some woman who has influenced you to accomplish some mission, who provided you with purpose, direction and motivation.  If she is still alive, drop a note or better yet, call her.  It will do you good.

Thank you for remembering with me what real leadership is and for remembering that by broadening our definition of it, we widen our heritage. 

 Until recently assigned as a resource manager at Fort Jackson, Chaplain (MAJ) Karen Diefendorf served as the Chaplain Officer Basic Course developer and instructor and also as the subject matter expert in ethics.