Post US 2016 Election, I find myself at a crossroads. 

Decision: Step forward in my life and let me voice ring out or hibernate in “numbness”. I choose to shine. I choose to let my voice be heard. Be vulnerable. Be willing to say what I feel as a way of expressing myself and sharing my truth- not focusing on what I am “against” or resentful of, but instead what I am “for” and what I encourage in the world.

Here’s to jumping off the diving board into the deep end of the pool!

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Attached is a beautifully written article by the President of Smith College.

It encapsulates the response I’ve always given when asked “Why do you still believe that Women’s Colleges are necessary?”

Answer: Because on campus at a college like Smith or Wellesley, every leadership role is held by a woman.

As the President of my Senior Class at Wellesley almost 3 decades ago, I learned to express myself as a leader and as an opinionated, hard-working young women without concerning myself with traditional gender roles or biases placed on me by my thinking or anyone else’s. Where terms like “bossy”, “aggressive” or “too loud” were not used.

This exceptional experience prepared me and made me stronger for the remainder of my life — where I would not always be shielded from these harsh terms.

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For Women, Glass Ceilings, and Glass Walls, Too

NORTHAMPTON, Mass. — One week after the election, many students on my campus, one of the nation’s largest women’s colleges, remain heartbroken that Hillary Clinton was not able to shatter, in her words, “the highest, hardest glass ceiling.”

At Smith, every student leadership position from captain of the sports team to president of the student government is held by a woman, but my students know, even today, that this is a rare exception in a sexist world.

Still, there was a lot of hope and excitement on campus leading up to Election Day. This week, one student told me: “I’m still in shock. The reality is hitting me in waves.”

Many people have attributed Mrs. Clinton’s loss to her actions in public life, or to an America that wanted “change” at any cost. But this loss is as much about sexism as anything else.

For our mothers, sexism was explicit. Their war stories would make any Title IX officer today shudder. For our daughters, today’s students, sexism is often implicit. Both men and women internalize stubborn cultural biases about gender that affect our understandings, actions and decisions.

For this reason, female leaders are restricted by far more than ceilings. Glass walls erected by these unconscious biases box women into traditional roles and limit our opportunities.

The psychologist Raymond Cattell coined a phrase — “coercion to the biosocial mean” — that addresses this issue: Society punishes people who deviate from culturally expected patterns or push boundaries. Every professional woman I know could share incident after incident that illustrates this phenomenon.

Once, for example, a colleague told me that he thought I was “scary” when I voiced a strong opinion about a job candidate during a faculty meeting. I went home feeling chastised. The next day I checked with a few female colleagues; they had found me convincing, not scary.

This kind of feedback leads to an irresolvable conflict for female leaders. If women stay boxed in by the norms of our gender — passive, gentle and congenial — we may not be viewed as leadership material. If women adopt the norms of a leader — commanding, decisive and assertive — we may be punished for being too bossy, too pushy, too strident, too ambitious, too scary.

The glass walls of coercion were on full display during the presidential election. Donald J. Trump repeatedly accused Mrs. Clinton of lacking stamina — code for “women are weak” — but he also referred to her as a “nasty woman,” implying she was moving out of the bounds of proper behavior for her gender. He may as well have said, “Women need to know their place.” On top of that, Reince Priebus, the current head of the Republican Party and future chief of staff for Mr. Trump, tweeted that Mrs. Clinton needed to smile more, a coded reminder that women must project beauty and deference to the male gaze.

It’s hard to believe it has been more than 50 years since the second wave of feminism. As Gloria Steinem has noted, first a movement is ridiculed, and then it isn’t news anymore. That may explain the stunning lack of coverage about Mrs. Clinton’s constant female balancing act throughout the campaign.

There is ample social science that shows how society expects more from female leaders than from male leaders. In one Yale School of Management study, participants who evaluated fictional stories of leaders making mistakes, rated women three times more negatively than men for those mistakes — a huge effect. In the real world, female chief executives are more likely to become targets of campaigns by activist investors, and women at the top of all professions are regularly subjected to intensive scrutiny — and now, in the age of the internet, abusive online comments — especially when they venture into traditionally male realms like sports and technology.

This is obviously not the world I want for my students. It’s time to take a sledgehammer to the glass walls. The best way to stop coercion is to make the invisible visible by sharing our stories. When we can better name what’s happening, we can begin to change the narrative.

To this aim, I invited Smith students to my home on Sunday night, with no agenda except to listen. Sixty students showed up. They reported feeling vulnerable and fearful about the future, for themselves and the country. They were most galvanized by the need to address the intersection of sexism with racism, Islamophobia, classism and other forms of hatred. Notably, students of color spoke about expecting more from white feminists in our role as allies. They are right to expect more, and I, for one, plan to do more.

Student after student — representing both parties — described the election as a “wake-up call.”

They have already begun to organize. And this is a generation that knows how to do so, as the Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter movements powerfully demonstrated. By the end of the night, students were discussing how to pressure their members of Congress and how to prepare for the midterm elections. Increased activism by students and others may be the silver lining of this election.

Students also spoke powerfully about the value of sharing experiences. As the evening went on, I could hear them rewriting the narrative with every story. It reminded me of a story I didn’t get a chance to share with them: The last time someone called me bossy, a term reserved for women alone, I simply replied, “At Smith, we call it leadership.”