Women and Leadership Real Lives, Real Lessons

A powerful call to action for achieving equality in leadership.

Women make up fewer than ten per cent of national leaders worldwide, and behind this eye-opening statistic lies a pattern of unequal access to power. Through conversations with some of the world's most powerful and interesting women--including Jacinda Ardern, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Christine Lagarde, Michelle Bachelet, and Theresa May--Women and Leadership explores gender bias and asks why there aren't more women in leadership roles.

Julia Gillard was the 27th Prime Minister of Australia, serving from 2010 to 2013. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was Nigeria's Minister of Finance from 2003 to 2006 and from 2011 to 2015, and Foreign Minister in 2006. She was Managing Director of the World Bank from 2007 to 2011, overseeing South Asia, Europe, Central Asia, and Africa. She is the author of Reforming the Unreformable: Lessons from Nigeria (MIT Press).

Prologue Why are we writing this book?
1 Doing the numbers
2 Our framework
3 Pathways to power: Introducing our women leaders
4 Hypothesis one: You go girl
5 Hypothesis two: It's all about the hair
6 Hypothesis three: Shrill or soft - the style conundrum
7 Hypothesis four: She's a bit of a bitch
8 Hypothesis five: Who's minding the kids?
9 Hypothesis six: A special place in hell - do women really support women?
10 Hypothesis seven: Modern-day Salem
11 Hypothesis eight: The role-modelling riddle
12 The stand-out lessons from eight lives and eight hypotheses
Annex Snapshots of the pathways to power
Notes
Acknowledgements
About the authors