Engendering leadership

Abstract

"(...) Who is a leader? What is good leadership? What are the qualities that we expect or admire in leaders? What are those things that we would not an accomplished leader to be? Can an assessment of power-flow from the leader to the people be a marker to define responsible leadership ? These questions are valid and necessary that one has to deal with, in order to critically and imaginatively weave a pattern of responsible leadership that would contribute to the enhancement of human dignity and wholeness in community at any given time.[...] What I shall do in this brief paper is to juxtapose two stories of women in leadership – one is a story from the past and the other a story from the present – to address the above questions as well as focus on engendered leadership that would lead to a transformed community. The first story is that of Miriam, the first woman in the Bible who was named as a prophet. The second story is a collective story of women who participated in the Panchayati Raj governance, in Karnataka, South India. An overview of these two stories brings to surface, issues concerned with power, control over resources, exercise of freedom with responsibility, agency over one’s body, reclaiming of the power of voice and speech, and so on.", (p. 13.)