Want a female secretary of defense? I can suggest half a dozen supremely qualified candidates.
OPINION | Ending sexual harassment in national security
Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s opinions staff.
One best idea: Sexual harassment takes place everywhere. This is one in a series of posts about how various industries can change to stop sexual harassment. What’s your one best idea? Share it here.
Rosa Brooks’s idea: Promote more women in national security
Brooks is author of “How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything” and former counselor to the undersecretary of defense for policy.
It’s simple. Hire and promote more women into leadership positions. Specifically, aim to fill at least 30 percent of policy and security leadership positions with women. Research suggests that 30 percent is the magic number, the tipping point at which women stop being a beleaguered minority — tokens, unable to change organizational culture — and serve as effective change agents.
It’s time to stop making the old excuses, that “there just aren’t enough qualified women” and so on. There are now hundreds — thousands — of highly qualified women in the foreign policy and national security worlds. There are female admirals and generals. There are women who have earned military awards for valor and whose sacrifices have been recognized with Purple Hearts. There are women who have served as ambassadors and assistant secretaries and senior White House officials; women with high-level intelligence experience, women who have run major think tanks and women who are top-notch scholars. If we had to stock the entire federal government with spectacularly accomplished women, we’d have plenty to choose from. Want a female secretary of defense? I can suggest half a dozen supremely qualified candidates. A female CIA director? Ditto. Female military service chiefs? There’s an increasingly deep bench of women with stars on their shoulders.
When women reach critical mass in organizational leadership positions, things change. Women are less likely to create or tolerate a “locker room” atmosphere at work and more likely to notice and challenge sexism than male leaders. As a recent Harvard Business Review article noted, “Male-dominated management teams have been found to tolerate, sanction, or even expect sexualized treatment of workers.” Conversely, organizations with plenty of women in leadership positions tend to be organizations in which sexual harassment is less likely to occur.
Increasing gender diversity has other important benefits, too. Companies with more women on their boards outperform those with few or no women, reaping substantially higher returns on sales, equity and invested capital. A McKinsey study found that gender-diverse organizations outperformed those with less gender diversity. (Ethnic diversity increased performance still more.)
It’s not complicated. Want to reduce the incidence of sexual misconduct in foreign policy and national security workplaces, while simultaneously improving performance and the quality of decisions?
Just add women.
