Women Within Orthodox Leadership: A New Intitative
The Orthodox community has very few women in its leadership positions. To be sure women actively volunteer in their local communities and in all women organizations, but paid and prominent positions are reserved for a small cadre of very dedicated and proven women.The Orthodox Caucus hopes to increase the number and comfort of women in leadership. The objectives will be to empower and train traditional women, support their personal plans for organizational leadership, enhance their visibility and strengthen their voice.
A. The Challenge
The Orthodox community has very few women in its leadership positions. Barely a handful of women serve in high-level positions of national organizations and women represent less than 25% of national board members. To be sure, women actively volunteer in their local communities and in all women organizations, but paid and prominent positions are reserved for a small cadre of very dedicated and proven women.
The dearth of women in leadership positions hurts the Jewish community, largely in three ways:
1) It deprives the Orthodox Community of Potential Talent
In withholding the representation of half the population, the Orthodox community’s potential for excellence is limited. The unique sensibilities and skills of women that have so clearly benefited secular society are denied to Orthodox culture.
2) It Alienates Women
The needs, opinions, and desires of women are not adequately considered by male leadership. Whatever the issue - funding in day schools, synagogue design, maternity leave policies, spiritual expression - the woman’s voice is barely heard or integrated into decisions.
3) It Disempowers Women Seeking To Dedicate Their Talents to Orthodoxy.
Individual women who want to merge their love of Orthodoxy with their careers are denied that opportunity, distancing them from their heritage and their personal empowerment. Younger women are very much aware of the discord between their acceptance in the secular professional world and that of their own community.
Orthodox women face unique challenges in seeking leadership positions. Many ritual-based professions are denied to women. Most women have a limited entrée into Talmudic discourse and therefore into some of the male culture. There is a greater social gender-divide in Orthodox society. Orthodox women often have larger families and heightened work/family life issues and Orthodox culture evolves slowly and cautiously. Despite these limitations, many women desire to apply their skills to Orthodox organizational life.
B. The Response of The Orthodox Caucus
The Orthodox Caucus - a coalition of Orthodox professionals, rabbis and lay leaders based in New York - is fully aware of the challenges. We therefore propose a modest pilot program, with the overall goal being to increase the number and comfort of women in leadership. The objectives will be to empower and train traditional women, support their personal plans for organizational leadership, enhance their visibility and strengthen their voice.
In the coming year, the Caucus will research the issue and identify lay leaders and professional workers. Our objectives will be accomplished by:
1) Networking women, through the Web, and personally, in conferences. This will foster a sense of community—to empower the women already taking steps to leadership, and to provide them with the practical and emotional support of their peers. We plan to host a web-based discussion group, serving an international audience. In New York, we will have two one-day conferences for lay leaders, piggybacking on existing conferences (such as Rabbinical Council of America, The Orthodox Union, Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education, Emunah Women, and Amit Women). Similarly, we will host two networking events for professional women. Twenty to forty women will attend the conferences.
2) Mentoring and training selected women. Using the successful models of the Advancing Jewish Women’s Baltimore Mentoring Circle and the Muehlstein Program, we will create four small groups of women to work with an Orthodox mentor. The groups will meet regularly, develop a curriculum for their growth, share their challenges and successes, and learn to mentor others.
The publicity and excitement generated from these programs will play an integral role in raising communal expectations and urging organizations to rethink their recruitment, compensation, honors and titles, promotions, and work culture. After one year of programming we will evaluate with objective measurements of success (number of promotions, hires, salary parity, flexible hours) and subjective interviews to sense the morale of the participants.