Simmons College

President Helen Drinan's Welcoming Address

Simmons College - A Global Expert in Educating Women for Their Own Empowerment and for Leadership
Good morning to all members of the Simmons community gathered here for our Convocation. This is a vitally important day for the college, one which signals the beginning of another full year of study, research, teaching and service — all the elements of higher education that have earned communities such as ours the respect of generations. Last year at Convocation, I asked that we close our eyes and imagine the College 100 years from now. I said that I believe Simmons will have become a beacon of leadership in the world of higher education. My vision is of an institution that is a resource to our nation and world, known for our expertise in fields that improve the human condition, sought out for the findings of our highly reputable research, and seen as the global expert in educating women for their own empowerment and for leadership.

Today, I would like to expand further on my belief that Simmons will be seen as the global expert in educating women for their own empowerment and for leadership. I believe the College has a great foundation for such a vision, one created initially for us by John Simmons, and then well stewarded by generations of faculty, staff, students and alumnae. What we have learned through our sustained commitment to women's education, including the vitally important work done for three decades by the School of Management, positions us uniquely in American higher education to take on this vitally important work, work that directly contributes to the social, economic, and political status of women here in the United States and abroad.

I believe that the realities of life for women in the 1800s bear critically on the story of the founding of Simmons College in 1899. Our benefactor, John Simmons, lived from 1796 to 1870; during this time he rose from a farm boy to the largest clothing manufacturer in the country. He created the concept of ready-to-wear clothing after making the simple observation that many of his customers were of similar proportions, and therefore he could make multiple versions of the same design in standard sizes. Once he had made his fortune in retail clothing, he invested it in real estate, owning at one point much of what we now know as the Financial District of downtown Boston. Averting financial disaster after the Great Boston Fire of 1872, our very astute Mr. Simmons had insured all his holdings; once rebuilt, they were sold to fund the College, which first opened its doors in 1902, and ultimately at our current location, 300 the Fenway, in 1904.

We know what Mr. Simmons intended for the College; in his will, he states that he wished to "...found and endow an institution to be call the Simmons Female College...for the purpose of teaching...best calculated to enable the scholars to acquire an independent livelihood." His decision to make this incredibly innovative move happened in the context of harsh realities of life for women.

In the mid 1800s, women were very vulnerable to the decisions of others and the cruelty of fate, with very little capability to fend for themselves or seek protection for their own rights under the law. As citizens, they did not have the right to vote. It was difficult for women to own property outside the control of their fathers or husbands. There were no laws against wife beating until the latter part of the century. With a significant cultural inclination toward domesticity for women, most women worked because they had to, not because they wished to. As a result, the participation of women in the American workforce was small — only 10 to 15 percent during the height of John Simmons's business career. Their work experience was as harsh as the other aspects of their lives. They had to tolerate unequal pay just to find employment, and they were actively excluded from work preferred by men. Generally, women had work of no intrinsic value and were paid menial wages. In response to such discouraging conditions, women from all walks of life were increasingly drawn to activism in the abolitionist, labor and suffrage movements.

Although we have no information to confirm my thesis, I believe it is not a big stretch to think that John Simmons was well aware of these realities for women when he decided to endow the College. After all, the labor required to support his commercial success was sewing, considered during his time to be "women's work." It also was backbreaking work without mechanized assistance until the introduction of the sewing machine in the mid 1800s. As the father of two daughters born into privilege, did he not see the link between his personal success and the scores of women who worked for him, who needed to work, and did so for small wages? I choose to believe that he did make these connections, and that his commitment to women's education designed for their economic betterment was deliberate, purposeful, and early evidence of sustaining values this College still espouses.

How does our heritage inform what Simmons College does today? Is there still the compelling role for women's education that existed in our founder's time? Many today will argue that the need for women's colleges is over, and that the continuation of single-gender education for women creates a sense of isolation and a lack of real world experience. If women must compete with men in the workplace, why not be so educated?

It is certainly true that the world in which we live has become much more responsive to the issues women face. By 1920, women had the vote. During the two world wars, women had many more opportunities to demonstrate their competence in traditionally non-female ways, and by the early 1960s, the legal rights they so sorely needed began to fall into place. In 1963, the Equal Pay Act requiring equal pay for equal work was passed. The Civil Rights Act amendment against sex discrimination in employment was passed in 1964. In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson issued Executive Order 11375, creating the requirement that federal employers take affirmative action ensuring equal treatment and opportunities for their employees.

One hundred years after John Simmons's death, we saw the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 signed into law by President Nixon, enabling legal action against employment discrimination and assuring gender equity in every educational program, including sports. 1974 brought the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, ensuring non-discrimination in credit decisions; 1976 saw the admission of women to all the U.S. military academies; and 1978 ushered in the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, ruling out discrimination based on pregnancy, childbirth and related conditions. In 1981, the first woman, Sandra Day O'Connor, was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, followed in 1993 by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in 2009 by Sonia Sotomayor and in 2010 by Elena Kagan.

In spite of all these gains, women have still not achieved their full potential in the U.S. economy. As the White House Report on the Status of Women tells us, it is clearly the case that women are now outperforming men in educational attainment, that is, number of advanced degrees earned in all fields but science and technology; however, that progress certainly has not translated into gender equity in leadership roles anywhere, including most female dominated professions. Women's participation in the workforce is just about equal to men, but pay for women continues to lag men's pay: at all levels of education, women earned about 75 percent of what their male counterparts earned in 2009.

For a long time, we believed that these were issues that would be resolved naturally once the pipeline of educated and experienced women compared favorably to that of men. That certainly has not proven true. A McKinsey study released this year identifies four primary reasons women are not progressing as much as they want to, and according to the study, they do want to. These four are: 1) structural obstacles, such as lack of access to informal networks where they can make important connections, lack of women role models, and lack of sponsors who can provide opportunities, which men have; 2) lifestyle issues, noting that motherhood itself actually is not usually the precipitating factor in departure from opportunities; rather both women and men who are parents as well as women who are not parents indicate it is the 365/24/7 nature of senior leadership roles which cause them to make other choices; 3) imbedded institutional mindsets, including stereotyping of gender appropriateness for certain roles, as well as the experience that women are more often evaluated for promotions on performance, while men are measured for promotion against potential; and finally, 4) imbedded individual mindsets: in the McKinsey study, more men at all ages expressed the desire to take on more responsibility in their organizations and have more control over results than women.

The study goes on to note that, "...no matter how they feel about the current situation, women never lose their belief in their abilities..." regardless of age, motherhood status, or seniority. "Women have the ambition and believe they have the qualifications... over time, however, the barriers seem to get larger and women's belief that there is opportunity ahead shrinks — and along with it, their willingness to keep pushing."

McKinsey makes some recommendations for organizations to increase the likelihood of women achieving their full potential, and they base their sense of urgency on the impact the achievement of this goal would have on the economy of the United States. They point out that: "The additional productive power of women entering the workforce... (since the 1970s...) accounts for about a quarter of current GDP. But the full potential of women in the workforce has not yet been tapped. Now, it is critically important to do so. As the U.S. struggles to sustain historic GDP growth rates, bringing more women into the workforce and fully deploying high skill women to drive growth through productivity improvements are essential to meeting that goal."

Based on the McKinsey research, it is clear that empowering women to take their full position in roles of responsibility has both national and personal outcomes that are highly desirable. But even if all organizations in the country start doing the kind of things recommended by so many smart people, are we not missing the opportunity to empower women and girls, and to prepare them for leadership at a much earlier age, when the effects will have a lifelong impact? Should we not look to our educational institutions, from early to higher education, to embrace this responsibility?

I believe that this research is a clarion call to institutions like ours to take a leadership role — now — in the interests of this and future generations of girls and women.

And who is better positioned to lead this important work than an institution like ours, founded to educate women for their economic empowerment, and dedicated to this agenda for more than 100 years? A recent study by Princeton University on Women's Undergraduate Leadership found that, after 40 years of coeducation at Princeton, women were less likely than men to hold leadership roles in campus organizations, and to receive university prizes and prestigious graduate fellowships, in spite of the fact that they performed at a higher level of academic excellence than the men. They further reported that these disparate levels of participation were not unique to Princeton, based on comparisons with 10 other prestigious colleges and universities for which they had data.

In a most enlightening fashion, all the recommendations for reversing these outcomes put forward in the report are today things we do as a matter of course on this campus: 1) recognize and celebrate the work of leadership; 2) support and encourage women who seek to lead; 3) help the community to understand what leadership entails; 4) celebrate successes in all disciplines while working to strengthen areas of disparity; 5) take leadership in confronting stale, old-fashioned stereotypes about female and male behavior; 6) recognize the connection between social and extracurricular life to classroom performance.

Specifically, they recommend the creation of a plan with measureable goals including an orientation process attending to leadership, a mentoring program, increasing faculty awareness related to supporting and encouraging the exceptional capacity of female students, and offering specific leadership training for community-wide distribution. If you are a member of the Simmons community, you will recognize these activities as things we have done for a very long time. The difference is that we have taken them almost for granted as a way of life, rather than recognizing them as valuable learnings toward the goal of helping all girls and women to develop their own empowerment and leadership potential.

We have the expertise — as well as the experience — to provide an extraordinary resource to a world of interested organizations and institutions that share a common goal of advancing women. It is time to claim our preeminence and take our historically appropriate role. As we move forward together, let our beacon of leadership be the light for all to follow, today and hereafter.