The Foreign Service Journal, June 2008

Some Contributing Factors I recently interviewed 10 success- ful female officers, including ambas- sadors and office directors, to help me wrestle with this question. Here are some factors that might explain the decline at the top. The Goldilocks Dilemma. Many women don’t speak up because they will either be ignored or criticized for doing so. And the resulting silence makes it even harder for anyone — individuals or organizations like AFSA — to challenge management. How to raise these issues is a related problem. There is a widespread perception that assertive women are strident or in- competent; yet they aren’t taken seri- ously if they remain soft-spoken and diplomatic. In other words, women are perceived as too soft, or too hard, but never “just right.” Two former ambassadors com- mented that the higher the rank, the less tolerance of “independence” or dissent. This attitude affects men, too, but hits women harder because they undergo more scrutiny. Lingering Stereotypes. Too many men still view women as better at caregiving than being take-charge leaders. A recent study of profession- al-level women in management posi- tions by Catalyst, an organizational development company, revealed that subordinates are more likely to follow the lead of supervisors they like. At the same time, men are harsher judges of women than are women — a 360-degree whammy. Until the evaluation standards for what is con- sidered good leadership are rewritten, women will pay the price in terms of lost promotions or marginal assign- ments. Family-Unfriendliness I am convinced that the need for spouses of Foreign Service personnel to have careers and incomes of their own, including retirement benefits, is a major factor contributing to the higher resignation rates and early retirements of female officers. While this tension affects all Foreign Service families, male spouses seem less will- ing to tolerate the career distortions it can cause. (This can also be true of spouses who are former FSOs, if they don’t like trailing their more success- ful wives around the world, and male members of tandem couples, of course.) As one female FSO told me: “I think women with spouses still have a harder time finding overseas assign- ments that work out for the spouses, partly because of societal attitudes toward male accompanying spouses. There are also very different and dif- ficult problems for mothers involving maternity leave (we don’t have it), flexibility for child care, and the specter of unaccompanied tours.” All the women I interviewed also cited the physical and emotional strains a Foreign Service career places on sustaining a marriage, rais- ing children and taking care of an extended family, particularly while living overseas for prolonged periods. They also pointed out that a hide- bound Department of State still has not caught up with the realities that today’s work force requires dual incomes, dual careers and a flexible personnel system. Instead, accompa- nying spouses are still being mostly assigned to low-level jobs overseas, despite their qualifications — when they can get work at all. Nor do the department’s personnel policies take into account the phenomenon of later marriage and delayed childbear- ing. One officer I interviewed won- dered why spouses couldn’t automati- cally be considered staff and be paid (as in some other countries). Another suggested a reserve corps be formed to help professionally capable spouses manage their careers. Then there is the growing number of unaccompanied or adult-only posts. Several officers told me that they would resign rather than leave their families for a year. The “com- pact” between department manage- ment and individual employees has been broken, another senior officer said. “We are not the military.” Deficits in Resources and Leadership A third issue that all of my peers noted is the lack of State Department resources and leadership committed to the Foreign Service as an institu- tion and to its people. Long-running budget shortfalls are taking a real toll on morale and effectiveness, both at the macro and micro levels. Then there is the perennial mismatch be- tween the number of senior officers and senior positions. There also seems to be little focus on helping individual officers do their jobs, with profound effects on the col- lective ability to accomplish our mis- sion. Retired Ambassador Prudence Bushnell, a beneficiary of the Palmer lawsuit and a high achiever, noted that many women feel that the Foreign Service is not delivering on its promis- es, even as it demands more and more personal sacrifices. J U N E 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 13 S P E A K I N G O U T Assertive women are seen as strident or incompetent; yet they aren’t taken seriously if they remain soft-spoken and diplomatic.