October 16, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
NEW BOOKS
Leveling the Playing Field: Advancing Women in Jewish Organizational Life
by Shifra Bronznick, Didi Goldenhar, Marty Linsky
In this guidebook, Shifra Bronznick, Didi Goldenhar, and Marty Linsky, three nonprofit consultants, examine the ways in which Jewish nonprofit groups tend to be biased against women, and how women can overcome the bias and create more-effective organizations.
Advancing Women Professionals and the Jewish Community, a New York nonprofit group that advocates promoting women as leaders of Jewish groups, conducted a 2004 study with United Jewish Communities documenting differences between men’s and women’s roles in Jewish organizations. The study found that, while women make up the majority of the executives who work at Jewish federations, they are absent from the “most influential, prestigious and best-compensated jobs in the system.”
The authors explore what lies behind that difference and lay out a three-step process for organizational change based on identifying bias, taking steps to change it, and making staff members accountable for the organization’s fair treatment of men and women. In the final part of the book, “Strategies for Change,” women leaders from various groups share how they reached the top.
“You can’t sit back and wait to be asked,” said Barbara Balser, the first female president of the Anti-Defamation League. “You have to go to the kingmakers and offer yourself.”
Other female leaders encourage women to speak up at meetings, forge allies with other women leaders, and consider career coaching.
Publisher: Cambridge Leadership Associates, 124 Mount Auburn Street, Suite 200 North, Cambridge, Mass. 02138; (617) 576-5766; http://www.cambridge-leadership.com; 128 pages; $15; ISBN 978-0-615-17653-6.
