The Courier Mail
June 16 , 2007
By Elizabeth Allen
VISITING American women's advocate Marie Wilson has some great lines.
"Show me a woman without guilt about balancing work and family and I'll show you a man," she told Brisbane women this week.
Or: "I had five children under six and nothing has looked hard to me after that."
As for women in politics: "In the States, when a woman makes a mistake in politics, we are over her like flies. When she does well, maybe someone notices."
Wilson wasn't trying to be a comedian. Her message was serious.
Wilson, 63, is the founder of The White House Project, designed to advance women as leaders in every sphere – political, social, cultural and economic.
She told her audience at St Aidan's Girls School at Corinda, in Brisbane's west, that women today faced "choiceless choices" in how they lived their lives.
"They are not real choices if women are responsible in four out of five homes for the care of children," she said.
Wilson, who has raised three daughters and two sons, is not calling on women to abandon their family responsibilities.
Rather, she is urging them to take leadership positions to achieve structural change in society to achieve a better sharing of power and workloads, so women and men can lead happier, balanced lives.
"Our sons and daughters know something is definitely missing from the body politic and their lives," she said.
Engaged in an Australia-wide tour speaking to girls' schools, Wilson says the secret to societal change lies in encouraging a critical number of women into power who have a passion for change.
"It's not about getting a woman at a time into power," she said. "One woman is usually looked at first as, 'What's your hair like? Who are you with?' It's personal, not substantive; it's gender not agenda."
The aim of The White House Project is to encourage a diverse group of women into leadership positions.
She says Australia ranks 33rd in the world and the US 68th on the scale of the percentage of women in government .
The White House Project so far had trained more than 2000 women in debating and other communication skills to prepare them to run for office.
"Women bring something different to leadership," Wilson told a group of mothers and teachers. "Most of you have learnt to lead from the foot of the table. But women are still projecting leadership on to men."
Wilson says women, more caring and co-operative because of their "foot of the table" experience, are desperately needed in national and international security positions. But cultural barriers need to be broken down before women can lead in significant numbers.
She cites the recent example of Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan claiming Deputy Labor Leader Julia Gillard was unfit to lead because she was "deliberately barren".
"These are centuries-old definitions of women," she said.
Such cultural barriers help prevent men and women being "equally involved in work, family and culture".
Ten years ago, Wilson was the head of the Ms Foundation when it initiated the highly successful Take Our Daughters to Work Day. Men were asked to take their daughters to work as a way of exposing them to the possibility of different jobs.
But girls were not the only ones to benefit.
"Men said, 'It was the first time I could come out as a family man'."
Wilson believes the US is now at a tipping point. Research earlier this year found Americans were ready to elect a woman president within the next five years.
"There's a growing number of men who grew up with their fathers absent and they are wanting to be home with their children more," she said. "They are saying more and more: 'I don't think this is working for me either'."
