June 12, 2003 | Read Time: 7 minutes
After only a few weeks on the job, the new chief executive of the YWCA of the USA, Patricia Ireland, has already achieved one of her goals: raising the profile of the 145-year-old organization and its 313 local affiliates. But the attention the group is receiving is not the kind she had sought.
The Traditional Values Coalition and other conservative groups have protested Ms. Ireland’s appointment and are encouraging donors to stop giving to the YWCA because of her ties to abortion-rights and gay-cause groups, and the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition — a Washington group that advocates, in part, for transgender individuals (The Chronicle, May 30). What’s more, they argue her romantic involvement with another woman, which she discussed in her autobiography, is inappropriate behavior for the leader of the YWCA.
Yet Ms. Ireland, 57, appears unruffled by the controversy. A lawyer and former president of the National Organization for Women, Ms. Ireland says the criticism will fade once people understand that she intends to be an advocate for the YWCA’s priorities, not her own.
Ms. Ireland’s hiring is part of an effort by the YWCA, officially known as the Young Women’s Christian Association, to re-energize its advocacy efforts, says Audrey R. Peeples, chairwoman of the YWCA’s National Coordinating Board, which made the hiring decision.
“We didn’t anticipate the vitriolic response,” says Ms. Peeples. But “we personally feel she’s the best person for the job.”
Ms. Ireland says her experience at NOW and her recent work helping Merrill Lynch reach out to minority employees make her well-suited to tackle the YWCA’s advocacy goals: ending racism and helping women receive fair treatment in their jobs.
As head of the YWCA — which recently moved its offices from New York to Washington — she controls the national headquarters and its $3.2-million budget. But Ms. Ireland, who will receive $111,000 in compensation, says she sees herself more as a spokeswoman than a manager.
In an interview, she discussed her new position.
Why were you hired to run the YWCA of the USA?
Part of the reason was to have a national office and chief executive officer who would help with visibility and I would say, for lack of a better word, the branding. What do you think of when you think of the YWCA? I’m not sure most people think of the largest provider of battered women’s shelters, or one of the largest providers of child care.
What is the largest challenge to advocacy work for the YWCA?
The hard part to me is first changing public opinion, or if you’ve already got public opinion on your side — as we think we do with the general proposition of ending racism and empowering women — mobilizing people. Our job is not so much lobbying as it is moving things up in people’s perception in terms of urgency and perception that the work is not done.
Deborah Rhode at Stanford University Law School describes the “no-problem problem.” That is, we go through the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s and people see all this progress and think, “Oh, it must be all taken care of.” And somehow people don’t see how they step over the increasing number of families who are homeless on the street and somehow don’t focus on the rise in date rape.
Part of our job has to be combating that idea of no problem, that it’s all done. But progress is not the same as equality.
How will you win over YWCA’s that are skeptical about your appointment?
We need to be very concerned about our own people who are distressed or who have questions about my leadership. It’s important to me to put it in perspective. If we have 300-plus organizations, we have heard [privately] from eight of them maximum. Of the ones who have publicly spoken out, I count two.
Part of it is going to be ameliorated by time. There is concern that I have an agenda in my head other than the YWCA’s agenda, and I assure anyone that my mission is the YWCA’s mission. It’s not my mission, it’s not the National Organization for Women’s mission. It happens the YWCA’s mission fits closely with the work I’ve done for most of my adult life.
What about concerns from outside the YWCA?
There is concern from the ultraconservatives because they are adamantly opposed to some of the things I stand for and some things the YWCA stands for.
For instance, the YWCA does not discriminate based on religion when providing services or hiring people. The YWCA is very inclusive, coming from a Christian background and now embracing a wider array of women and men, who may be Christian, they may be Buddhist, they may be Hindu, they may be atheist.
There are those who are not in favor of a pro-choice position on reproductive rights, and this organization has that position. I wonder if everyone at the local level in the YWCA support groups has been aware of that. And my being on board makes them suddenly aware of that, and they’re like, “Wait a minute.” We have local autonomy, and [local Y’s] may be very focused on other programs. They are not anti-choice at the local level, but they do have the ability to focus on their community needs and how they work best strategically in their own community.
How do you respond to critics of your support of GenderPAC?
I want to send an e-mail out to our associations and allies and say, “Don’t believe everything you read.” GenderPAC has been characterized as an organization that encourages 16-year-olds to have sex-change operations. Such nonsense. Who would ever believe that?
The Gender Public Advocacy Coalition works to end violence based on gender stereotypes. For instance, one of the cases we took up last year was a young boy who came from Russia who was a figure skater and was beaten to the point of being hospitalized by the ice-hockey team at his high school, who said, “Only fags and sissies figure skate.” That is a gender stereotype. The view of these ice-hockey players is that real men don’t figure skate.
[At the same time] there should not be discrimination or violence against people who are transgender.
These are the things the organization addresses, and the characterizations have been so misleading that I find it offensive. It offends me that people would leap to take that hook and say, “Oh my gosh, she belongs to an organization encouraging 16-year-olds to have sex-change operations.” I’m surprised they didn’t add: “with your tax dollars and without their parents’ consent.” That’s usually the whole mantra.
I don’t want to be defensive, but I also don’t want us to allow our local associations to be stampeded by false stories.
Have any major donors protested your hiring?
There have been a few at the local level. [But] I’ve got a drawer full of congratulations and “attagirls” that far outweigh the handful within our organization who are concerned.
ABOUT PATRICIA IRELAND, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF THE YWCA OF THE USA
Education: Earned a bachelor’s degree in German, with a minor in Spanish, from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville in 1966. Earned her law degree from the University of Miami School of Law, in Coral Gables, Fla., in 1975.
Previous employment: Worked in the Washington office of the law firm Katz, Kutter, Alderman & Bryant. Previously, she served 10 years as president of the National Organization for Women. Before earning her law degree, Ms. Ireland spent eight years as a flight attendant for Pan American World Airlines.
Books she is currently reading: Work Miracles: Transform Yourself and Your Organization, by Stephen K. Hacker, Marta C. Wilson, and Cindy S. Johnston; and A Thief of Time, by Tony Hillerman.
