Twenty-two years ago Jacqueline Levine stood up at the General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations and decried the lack of women in the senior ranks of federation leadership.
Almost every aspect of Jewish communal life has changed since then – except for the dearth of women helping set policy at the top levels of lay and professional leadership in Jewish organizations.
“There are so few women in pivotal roles,” said Victoria Agron, assistant vice president at the United Jewish Appeal.
The “truth is that the federation system is a male-dominant cultures,” said Agron, who is also director of campaign planning and budgeting.
“They (the male leadership) don’t want us to be too `out there’ because it means confrontation, and the federation system, which sees itself as a healing system, doesn’t like that tension,” she said.
According to another veteran of Jewish communal life, Naomi Levine, feminism has made little impact on the place of women in Jewish organizations.
“Women in the Jewish community have always not gotten equal pay for equal work and not moved up the ladder in proportion to their numbers,” said Naomi Levine.
As national executive director of the American Jewish Congress from 1971 through `78, Levine was the first and only woman who has ever been the top professional at a major Jewish group that is not specifically a women’s organization.
According to Levine, if change is to happen in Jewish organizations, women must agitate more aggressively.
“Women in the corporate world use lawsuits,” she said. “Any discrimination on basis of sex is a violation of law, but Jewish women have not gone to their state commissions against discrimination.”
Jewish women don’t make “enough public statements about it, don’t go before boards of directors and make a big enough fuss.
“I don’t know any women who reduce their contributions because a Jewish organization doesn’t treat women fairly. Women have to use whatever instrument are available to them to make their case,” said Levine, who is now senior vice president for external affairs at New York University.
On the lay leadership side, a few women have chaired various major groups, in addition to the women-only organizations.
According to Shoshana Cardin, she is the only woman to have led more than one co-ed group as the top lay leader – she has chaired five organizations, including the Conference of President of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Council of Jewish Federations.
Cardin agreed that women are not challenging the organizational establishment enough. “Women have not been taught or acculturated to challenge and we’re relatively new at it,” she said.
“It requires a sense of security to take public pressure, to risk having people they do not know assassinating their character.
“Women are beginning to learn that the risk is sometimes worth the effort – even if they don’t succeed – because others will succeed after them,” said Cardin, who is currently chairman of the United Israel Appeal and of CLAL – the Center for Learning and Leadership.
Women also bring a different paradigm of leadership to their activism, a model of ten not understood or appreciated by the male-run establishment, according to Lynn Lyss, chair of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council.
“Women’s leadership styles are different than men. Women are more inclusive, more collaborative, less hierarchical than men, and try to involve everyone in the decision-making process,” she said. “It stimulates more activity and involves more people.”
In addition, there is “not enough recognition of the networking and contacts that women bring” to Jewish organizations, said Lyss.
Key to the success of anyone who wants to rise to the top of a Jewish organization is visibility in the corridors of power and access to the old- boy’s network that forms the leadership.
To accomplish that, women must seek out male mentors, according to Cardin. “Few women understand that the old-boy system is based on the camaraderie of men who conduct business on the golf course and at the health club,” she said.
“Women must be taken by their mentors to the right places to be seen and introduced.”
Cardin also wants to see more women in positions of responsibility and leadership advocating for other women. “Women have to support other women and see to it that they’re promoted. Women must ask if women are under consideration” when positions open up, she said.
“It has to be done in a very direct fashion. It is possible to receive a list (of candidates) with no women on it even today. We have to be ready to ask that they be sought out,” said Cardin.
It is not only at the national level that women are suffering little advancement. The local federation scene also reflects little progress over the last two decades in staff leadership, although there have been some advances in lay leadership.
The Council of Jewish Federations concluded a survey of women’s progress in federations a year ago. The results were presented to the organization’s executive committee at the General Assembly in Denver last month, and accepted.
The survey revealed that women have attained roughly the same levels of leadership on the lay and professional side, said Judy Adler Sheer.
Sheer is CJF’s assistant executive director with responsibility for human resources development, women’s advocacy and the women’s division. She prepared the report on the women’s advancement survey.
The survey, in information received shortly after its completion last year, revealed that women are stuck at the low and middle levels of professional federation leadership.
About 20 percent of North America’s 157 Jewish federations with paid professional leadership have female executive directors. But all but one are small and mid-size federations.
None of the largest 18 federations are run by a woman and just one of the 23 federations classified as large-intermediate has a woman at the helm.
About half of the smallest federations have female executive directors.
According to a CJF source involved in the survey last year, the few women in senior staff positions at federations earn substantially less than their male counterparts – 67 percent to 92 percent of what men at the same level make.
On the volunteer side of the equation, the picture is slightly different. In 1994, on of the 18 large city federations had a woman president, in Washington. There are two more female presidents-elect of large federations for 1995, in Cleveland and New York.
Women preside over four of the 23 large-intermediate federations.
“As with everything, the smaller the community, the higher up women are” in the hierarchy, said CJF’s Sheer.
Money, of course, paves the road to volunteer advancement in the federation world. Ultimately, the size of an individual’s contribution is reflected in invitations to chair committees and fill the positions that determine policy.
Much of the money donated to federations is from married couples, according to Sheer.
Yet those donations are considered “men’s money” and not equally the wife’s donation, unless she makes a separate gift through the women’s division.
“Women definitely have a case about not reaching leadership levels in federations,” and part of the reason is a problem of perception, she said.
“Women own far more of the money to federation than we currently give them credit for,” said Sheer. “The actual input of women into federation is being totally under-recognized.”
Is the gender imbalance being addressed?
“There’s cognizance and awareness, but it’s much more on the minds of women than on the minds of men,” said Agron of UJA.
Steps are being taken in some quarters. The Council of Jewish Federations last year created Sheer’s women’s advocacy portfolio.
Female federation presidents met during the recent General Assembly, as they have for the past few years. This year, for the first time, female federation executives also had their own leadership meeting.
According to Sheer, CJF may soon begin offering them seminars to build professional skills and help them advance through the ranks of top leadership.
As far as Jacqueline Levine is concerned, the value of such efforts is not yet clear.
“They are paying more lip service to the issue than they did 22 years ago,” she said. “It remains to be seen whether there’s any progress.”
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