The Low Down

This June, Columbia Business School and Barnard College are teaming up to create an Executive Education program aimed at women: "Women in Leadership: Expanding Influence and Leading Change." According to the website, the program is designed to "help elevate the impact of women leaders—enabling them to navigate the business landscape, develop and leverage their talents, and step into roles of greater influence."

This program builds on a conversation that was already prevalent, but has reached a new level of exposure over the past 6 years or so. It could (and has been) argued that this increase in attention is due, in large part, to Sheryl Sandberg. As the COO of Facebook, Sandberg was well positioned to publicly pose a question that no one seemed to be asking: "why do we have so few women leaders?" This question became the basis for her TED talk in 2010, her Barnard commencement speech in 2011, and her bestselling book, Lean In, in 2013. The question sparked a national conversation about women and their roles in the workplace. 

To discuss this question (and many others) we sat down with the women running this new Executive Education program: Rochelle Cooper ('84BC, '88TC, '89TC), Rita McGrath ('81BC, '82SIPA), and Elana Weinstein (Barnard Athena Center for Leadership).

We’re mixing things up a little bit here at The Low Down. We decided to feature a discussion from Past Present, a podcast that’s produced by three Columbia alumni: Nicole Hemmer '05GSAS, '06GSAS, '10GSAS (a research associate at the Miller Center for Public Affairs in Charlottesville, Virginia), Natalia Mehlman Petrzela '00CC (an assistant professor of history at The New School), and Neil Young '04GSAS, '05GSAS, '08GSAS (a historian and author of We Gather Together: The Religious Right and the Problem of Interfaith Politics).

In this episode, Richard Bulliet, Professor of History and Middle East Studies at Columbia, and Dr. Nina Ansary '89BC, '91GSAS, '09GSAS, '13GSAS, the author of the book, Jewels of Allah: The Untold Story of Women in Iran, discuss the women's movement in Iran and how Ansary's book breaks down stereotypical assumptions and the often misunderstood story of women in Iran today.

"Based on her doctoral thesis on the women's movement in Iran, Jewels of Allah shatters stereotypical assumptions and the often misunderstood story of women in Iran today. Challenging the dominant narrative of the demise of women and their downward spiral into passive submission since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Ansary argues that 'despite the current regime's best laid plans to redirect women into the private domain, the female population in Iran is distinguished by an unprecedented surge in female literacy and a flourishing feminist movement against the boundaries of traditional religious prescription.' " 

- Barnard Center for Research on Women (BCRW)

This talk was brought to you by BCRW and the Middle East Institute at Columbia University.