Sonia Sotomayor and the case for equality in public leadership

Published July 16, 2009 @ 09:51AM PT

Posted by Lauren on July 16th, 2009

The confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor raises questions not just about the composition of the Supreme Court, but the balance of power in our entire country. The fact is, we need women to have an equal voice in our nation's leadership. This is a very simple, yet somehow deeply complex idea.

Simple, because if you think about the range of diversity in our country, common sense would tell us that our public leadership should reflect the makeup of society. Otherwise, the needs of certain groups can easily be overlooked, and their unique experiences aren't brought to the table.

Complex, because this is a new concept. Despite America's goal to bring equality and justice to all, our history is riddled with different groups struggling to be heard and treated fairly. Certainly, never before have we been dedicated to ensuring that the governing power be divided based on the composition of our population. And don't get me wrong-we aren't now.

But there is, luckily, a growing sentiment that we should be thinking about the disparity between our government leadership and our society. And it seems that this idea is beginning with the need for women's voices in our country's leadership.

Many are conducting and reporting on research which shows that women having an equal seat at the table equals greater success. As Dee Dee Myers pointed out yesterday on MSNBC:

"Increasingly, there's a body of research which says that when you have a diverse group of decision-makers, they actually reach better decisions. [...] Businesses with more women on their boards and in senior management positions are more profitable."

Many articles have been written about the financial crisis, asking, if more women had been involved, would we be in such an economic disaster? Debora Spar, former Harvard Business School professor, says that women may "perceive and act on risk" in different ways - possibly leading them to avoid the "massively aggressive behavior that seemingly overnight brought us a crash of epic proportions." She goes on to say,

"We desperately need to bring more women into leadership positions on Wall Street, in politics, in regulatory bodies and in American life generally. We need women in leadership positions not only because they can manage as well as men but because they manage differently than men [they tend] to make different kinds of decisions and to accept and avoid different kinds of risk."

Now, before we go into any "wise Latina-she thinks women make better decisions" type territory, let me stop you there. That's not the argument. The argument is that if women were equally represented on these bodies of power, the decisions made could have a different outcome. With a more diverse set of people working together, you increase the chance that a more balanced and well-thought-out conclusion might be made.

What Sonia Sotomayor has said, repeatedly, during her confirmation hearings is true: "Our system is enriched by a variety of experiences." Simple idea in theory-endlessly complex in execution. But we have to start somewhere, and having Sonia Sotomayor on our Supreme Court is a heck of a start.