What prevents women from pursuing leadership positions? Various factors interact:

External factors can be:

• “Glass ceiling” — gender-specific discrimination,
• women are perceived as competition,
• men’s networks for recruitment and the stabilization of male privileges,
• stereotypes and prejudices.

Internal factors can be:

• lack of self-confidence and self-assurance among women,
• internalized stereotypes, prejudices, and female role models turned against oneself,
• structural discrimination within families,
• lack of one’s own networks,
• fear of individuating and exposing oneself,
• a negative view of power,
• reluctance to fight for one’s own interests,
• a referential way of thinking carried by a caregiving perspective,
• interest in a balance between work and family, but less in a career.

Women are sometimes surprised when men appear with a certain chutzpah. At times they miss a balance between self-presentation and its substantive underpinning. They need not do the same. But they can acknowledge the qualities and qualifications they have for themselves and call them to the attention of others. A ‘genuine,’ healthy, positive view of oneself radiates outward and inspires confidence — including in the ability to lead.

Women can overcome the loneliness of exclusion by joining together with others. It can be enriching if these are people with whom there is agreement AND if people of different views and lifestyles come together. Speaking as openly and freely as possible with one another about questions and joys, fears, doubts, psychological pitfalls, and problems is usually liberating and opens the way for the next step.

In Western societies, the experience of the group has become rare. The point of reference is the nuclear family, possibly a club, paid employment, or the home, if one has no job. Networks and support groups, on the other hand, can be laboratories for exchanging ideas, developing ideas, trying out new things, learning frustration tolerance, experiencing that one has something to say oneself, listening to others — and developing abilities that also qualify one for leadership tasks. For leading presupposes that several people work together.

Power relations are probably also at work in such groups. Through the actions of individuals and through the conditions that make this possible — or not. It is up to the participants themselves to take the power that gives power a shape constructively — on a small scale, which is always also a little of “the big picture.” Like the elephant’s trunk. It is this a learning process. But as the saying so nicely goes: “I’m almost done. I just still need to begin.”