Leadership and Older Women

Four discussion guides on leadership and capacity building for older women.

This publication was produced as a result of a series of focus groups and discussion meetings with the Older Women's Network in different areas of Australia.

Introduction

• Leadership is a term which is usually used to describe the person who sits at the top of an organisation, group or other body. It implies a sense of control and a hierarchical power structure and carries with it a range of emotive notions such as responsibility, authority and power - many of which women find abhorrent. Women tend to shy away from these ideas when considering themselves as leaders.
• Leadership, in the terms of the discussions generated in this project, is in many ways the wrong word because of the preconceptions the word brings with it. The leadership older women admire and strive to achieve has more to do with commonsense and helping others to understand their own situation in the world. It is clearly based in generosity, humanity and compassion. It is often based in modesty and may even be apologetic, but it is invariably successful in generating enthusiasm and the support of other women.
• The four discussion starters invite you to consider aspects of leadership as they affect older women and their organisations. They also look at how the traditional ways we have of valuing what we do in the world do not include the voluntary effort and community building which older women excel at.

A brief summary of the project

This project grew out of the results of the Creating Supportive Neighbourhoods and Communities for Older Women project conducted in 2001. It uses the life experiences and knowledge of older women to explore what they understand as leadership and how they can further develop their skills in leadership.

Older Women's Network (OWN) groups are finding it difficult to encourage older women to take a leading role and, in some areas have had difficulty finding enough women prepared to assist with the running of groups. Through a recent article in Centrelink's News for Seniors there has been a great surge of interest in OWN, particularly from isolated women and women in rural areas. We need to find ways to build the confidence of members in developing and running organisations.

Older women often acknowledge their willingness to be involved but sometimes believe they lack the skills or knowledge to be useful at an organisational level. They often do not realise that, through their life experiences at home and at work, they are highly skilled leaders, advocates, negotiators and networkers.

Aims of the project

The aims of this project are on-going as the discussion material developed by the project will be used by groups. The aims are:

• to encourage older women to participate in the management of Older Women's Network groups or other women's organisations
• to assist older women to recognise and develop their skills in networking,
• meeting participation and procedures, advocacy, lobbying and research
• to assist older women overcome negative social attitudes to older women
• to increase confidence and self esteem in older women
• to support older women in whatever capacity they are involved in women's organisations; whether as office bearers, advocates, consumer representatives, and networkers, and
• to investigate innovative practices older women can work with.

Contents

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For further information

Contact	:	Older Women's Network
Address	:	87 Lower Fort Street, Millers Point NSW 2000
Phone	:	02 9247 7046
Fax	:	02 9247 4202
Email	:	info@ownnsw.org.au

WWW

:

http://www.own.org.au