Women and Leadership: The State of Play and Strategies for Change

Foreword

Over the last century, the world of women and the landscape of leadership have been fundamentally transformed. In the United States, where it was once considered unseemly for women to vote, or even to assert their right to vote, women now constitute over half of the electorate and occupy many of the nation's highest elective offices. When I graduated from law school a half century ago, women accounted for less than 3 percent of the legal profession. Although I was in the top of my class, the only job offer that I received from a law firm was for that of legal secretary. Three decades later, I became the first woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Today, women constitute about half of all law students, and they occupy positions of influence ...