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A Message to Women at Duke: Devise Ideas and Take Action

Jenkins speech at Women's Leadership Dinner urges women to build a campus culture that fits their values

I'd like to elaborate on that wonderful introduction by sharing what most people don't usually tell you in their speeches. In addition to all the accomplishments, I thought this group might benefit from hearing some of my more personal stories, including how hard some of it was and what I've learned from all of this that is worth sharing with you tonight.

I walked across the Duke campus at a time when men sat on their fraternity benches and rated women who walked by, including me.

I played field hockey at Duke right before Title IX when we didn't have any funding for a coach, real uniforms, or transportation to the away games much less scholarships that would have meant the world to my parents and me.

Somehow, I left Duke with a fair amount of confidence and built a career in information technology, a world that wasn't friendly at all to women.

Through the years, I've had the experience of being one of the only women in a big, important meeting or in a board room surrounded by powerful men where I felt fairly petrified to speak up.

Once when I did speak up, I was told that my idea was "the stupidest thing" the CEO ever heard.

Perhaps hardest of all was that I wrestled with every imaginable hurdle of combining a career with motherhood, all the while loving both my kids and my work very intensely.

Obviously, I survived and kept on going. The key to how well I've done is what I'd like to share with you: I never did it by myself. Mostly, I leaned on other women. They listened well, they made me laugh again, and they helped me figure out how to get back up and keep on going. Typically, they could relate to how I felt and they had their own stories to share. So we realized that if we worked together, if we leveraged our collective energy, we could create change that worked better for everyone, men as well as women. We had one important asset that many of you here tonight also have: we turned to one another and we leveraged both the pleasures and the power of sisterhood.

I know from listening to students who are at Duke right now, that you live in a time and a place that rivals anything I've just described from my own life. I have a lot of empathy for how you feel. Duke and the larger culture in which you live are difficult to navigate. I don't have judgments or any corner on the right approach. I simply have some observations, some stories, and a little bit of inspiration that I hope will help you.

First the observations:

Whenever I interact with Duke students I find myself in complete awe of your intelligence, your dynamic personalities, and your get-up-and-go attitudes. But I also see too many of you standing on the sidelines quietly suffering. Not all of you, by any means, but too many students tell me that their experience here is one of pain and alienation and silence.

Even among those who are wildly happy to be here, I see an incredible amount of pressure to adopt a cultural script that doesn't always look like it's a great fit. I see really thoughtful, emotionally intelligent young women like you getting caught between what you've come to know and believe through your own life experiences and what you find to be culturally acceptable at Duke. I see a lot of focus on:

• looking a certain way, exercising and dieting all the time, wearing just the right clothes

• joining the right sorority and fitting in with all that that means

• hooking up, sometimes when it is all you really want from a guy, sometimes when what you want is a more meaningful relationship

• going to the right parties, even parties with themes that don't really feel right: Catholic schoolgirls, whores and pimps, executives and secretaries

• or going to parties that appeal to freshmen pledge recruits by featuring Duke women who are willing to strip, do lap dances or offer up their belly buttons and breasts for guys to do body shots.

I see that too many of you have lost your real voice, that you've reluctantly set aside values like empathy and self respect in order to fit into a world that is about demeaning yourself in a bid for attention and affection. So what? This is a time in life to try out different experiences and it's hard to swim against the tide, especially when the prevailing culture feels overwhelming. Furthermore, it feels fabulous when you do get attention for looking terrific, for being sexy and for getting noticed at an important party, no matter what the theme.

My answer to "So what?" is that I'd encourage you to think hard about who you really are separate from the desire for attention. I'd encourage you to think hard about the price you're paying over the long run: If you're not being true to yourself, this is psychologically costly stuff.

It hurts when you have a divide between how you really feel inside and how you behave in order to fit in.

It hurts when you go silent in order to be accepted by others.

It hurts when you subvert the desire to be who you really are and turn the frustration and anger inward.

It might seem like the easy way out, but it really hurts to just go numb.

This happens to women of all ages, but the initiation to this experience usually happens around your age or even a bit younger. In our eagerness to be accepted and valued, women stop believing in what we know to be true about ourselves and about the world around us.

I've done this. I can speak from painful personal experience. The resume which you heard at the beginning of my talk is impressive by many standards, but along the way, I sometimes just went numb and opted to sweep my feelings under the rug. I second guessed myself too many times and beat myself up for not saying something in just the right way or for not saying anything at all. I did it in my career; I did it and sometimes still do it in board meetings. I definitely did it in romantic relationships, on occasion I did it even with good friends and family. Over the years, I have come realize the psychological cost of self recrimination, self doubt and silence. I clawed and climbed my way back to what I know to be honest and real about myself.And you know what I've come to realize? When I spoke from my heart, people could hear me much better. I found that most people gravitate to people who are genuine. They respect my take on things and they don't overlook or dismiss me as much as when I was quieter. When I get some important things done, often with their help, I earn their respect and support.

This comes more readily to women as we get older and feistier, as we come into our own. But what's a woman like you to do right now in her life? I propose three major steps:

1. Get right with yourself.

2. Connect with others for support.

3. Speak up and take action together.

Step 1 is about getting right with yourself. Start by getting back in touch with who you really are. Who is the person who showed up here before you got burdened by all of the expectations and messages in movies and magazines, from your parents, the parties or classes at Duke, your friends or some guy you're interested in?If you've had some life experiences that are painful or mistakes you've made along the way, see what you can learn from them. The theme of so many "Oprah Winfrey" shows is "when you know better, you do better." We don't need to spend our lives reliving the past or having those painful experiences and mistakes define who we are going forward. We're better off putting energy into learning from the past, validating who we are today and moving forward with more wisdom.

Step 2 is to connect with others who will support who you are. I surmise that many of you in this room have a group of other women who care about you just the way you are. You are in a sorority in part because you share some common values and experiences with other women. I'm just suggesting that you deliberately turn to one another for support on what really matters to you.

Recently I learned that scientists have done MRI brain scans in which they found that there are areas of the brain which light up when people cooperate with one another. And the longer they cooperate, the more those areas light up. Better yet, the areas that lit up during cooperation were the same areas that respond to "chocolate, pretty faces, money, cocaine and a range of licit and illicit delights." To be honest, they had me at "chocolate," the "licit and illicit delights" are a big bonus. What this is saying is that our brains are wired to cooperate, people are wired for relationships, or as Natalie Angier of the New York Times wrote about this research:

"The small, brave act of cooperating with another person, of choosing trust over cynicism, generosity over selfishness, makes the brain light up with joy."

So I say simply, reach out to others and light up with joy! And chocolate.

Step 3 is equally exciting. When you figure out who you really are and you connect with others who will support that, then you have the power to make change happen. As sorority women at Duke, you constitute 40% of the female population here. You have an incredibly powerful voice if you only use it.And you have an organizational infrastructure that can help you. If you want a different social scene at Duke, you can create it. If you want to relate to men or other women in different ways, you can make that happen. If you don't like what you see in class or at a party or in your dorm, you don't have to stand there in silence. You don't have to start a protest either, you can just speak your mind and know that your friends and colleagues and sorority sisters will support you.

I have a Duke story to tell you that illustrates this very point. A few years ago, I was asked by Nan Keohane, our former president, to conduct a survey of the women on the Board of Trustees. We were starting to get a few more women in the board room, but too many women there were noticeably quiet. So we were in the room, but we had no voice. By the way, these trustees are women who are the top leaders in their field: a woman who is a State Supreme Court justice, a major civic leader, top academicians and a couple of important corporate executives. These are smart, decisive women who speak up in other settings. So I called them for what was supposed to be a 45-minute interview each. It often ended up being an hour, two hours or, in one case, a three-hour interview. These otherwise quiet board members had an awful lot to say. And, today there's no silencing them.

Part of what happened was simply an issue of numbers: as more women got on the board, we felt like there was enough critical mass. We could move beyond being a token or being marginalized if we said something that was in any way challenging or different from how the men in the room spoke. As research shows, it takes a critical mass of at least three women (in a group that is usually ten or eleven in size) to empower women to speak up.

Part of what happened was strong leadership from men who made a point of asking women their opinion and validating their contributions when they did speak up.

But most of the women on the Duke Board also realized that they needed to take the plunge and just start speaking up;

even if it wasn't in the same language as the male CEO's or investment bankers who asserted their opinions with such certainty;

even if we weren't called on or invited to speak;

and even if the issues were difficult ones to raise.

Women finally realized that we had a lot to add and we felt we owed it to ourselves and to all of you not to remain silent. It just wasn't acceptable any more.

So I leave you with a challenge: Get back in touch with your own sense of who you are, what you believe in and what you want out of your time here at Duke. Turn to your friends and your sorority sisters for power as well as pleasure that'll light up your brain. Realize that you constitute 40% of women at Duke and you've got some powerful critical mass and an organization behind you. Be like those women in the board room, stop worrying about how you will be viewed by others, and just take the plunge. Together you can build a culture at Duke that fits your needs and suits your values.

Decide that the "core four" sororities or, better yet, all of the Panhellenic Association will pass a resolution saying that you will no longer sponsor parties that are demeaning to women. Hold some discussion groups to talk to one another about this "effortless perfection" culture and how you might make some changes. I've heard so many women at Duke tell me that they need more mentorship. So design a mentorship program that meets your needs and insist on getting funding and resources to mentor undergraduate women (and maybe the men too).

Challenge the men at Duke to be more thoughtful about their attitudes and behavior. Realize that there are a lot of men, probably the majority of men, who feel uncomfortable with what this culture expects of them. Encourage them to start speaking up.

One of the women on the Board at Duke recently talked about an advertising campaign with the phrase "Real men respect women." Create a campaign around a slogan like that with a series of speakers, profiles of men who are respectful, and tee shirts and wristbands with that saying. Create a version of that campaign which speaks to what "real women" do. Write an op-ed in the Chronicle that says you want more women on the faculty, more women in leadership at Duke, or just more advisors and mentors, be they women or men. Identify an undergraduate woman who is a great leader on the issues you care about and then get out the vote for her when it comes time for DSG elections. Turn to those who have gone to Duke before you. Many alumni care deeply about women and the general culture at Duke. Ask them to share their expertise, time and money. I know they will respond.

These are my ideas and the ideas of some other women who care. Devise your own ideas and then take some action.

I've made some observations, told a few stories, offered some suggestions and issued a challenge. But I can't leave without offering some inspiration: I asked Brooke if she'd allow me to play a song tonight, John Mayer's "Waiting on the World to Change."

Me and my friends, we're all misunderstood.

 

They say we stand for nothing and there's no way we ever could.

 

Now we see that everything's going wrong with the world and those who lead it.

 

We just feel like we don't have the means to rise above and beat it.