Novelist and feminist campaigner Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in 1977 to a middle-class Igbo family in Enugu, Nigeria. Her mother became the first female registrar at the University of Nigeria, while her father was a professor of statistics there. The fifth of six children, she lived what she describes as a 'very happy childhood, full of laughter and love, in a very close-knit family.'   Adichie's 2013 lecture "We Should All be Feminists" discusses the damaging paradigms of femininity and masculinity. 'We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, "You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful, otherwise you would threaten the man."'

Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani education advocate who, at the age of 17, became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize after surviving an assassination attempt by the Taliban. Born on July 12, 1997, Yousafzai became an advocate for girls' education when she herself was still a child, which resulted in the Taliban issuing a death threat against her. On October 9, 2012, a gunman shot Malala when she was traveling home from school. She survived and has continued to speak out on the importance of education. In 2013, she gave a speech to the United Nations and published her first book, I Am Malala. In 2014, she won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Dame Stephanie Shirley is the most successful tech entrepreneur you never heard of. In the 1960s, she founded a pioneering all-woman software company in the UK, which was ultimately valued at $3 billion, making millionaires of 70 of her team members. In this frank and often hilarious talk, she explains why she went by "Steve," how she upended the expectations of the time, and shares some sure-fire ways to identify ambitious women ...

 Sheryl Sandberg is an American technology executive, activist, and author. She is the former chief operating officer (COO) of Facebook and founder of Leanin.org (also known as the Lean In Foundation). In June 2012, she was elected to the board of directors by the existing board members, becoming the first woman to serve on Facebook's board. Before she joined Facebook as its COO, Sandberg was vice president of global online sales and operations at Google, and was involved in launching Google's philanthropic arm Google.org. Before Google, Sandberg served as chief of staff for United States Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers. In 2012, she was named in the Time 100, an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world according to Time magazine. As of June 2015, Sandberg is reported to be worth over US$1 billion, due to her stock holdings in Facebook and other companies.

 1.  Leadership programs, particularly those that develop and promote women into leadership positions, need to adopt new pedagogical tools that appeal to Generation Xers—most have been modeled on the baby boomers. For example, successful leaders need to consider the qualities that different generations value.

 2.  It is suggested that the specific conflicts that arise in an organizational setting relate to the level of support that baby boomers might provide to those generation Xers with families, the understanding of the importance of work-family balance, and the creation of family-friendly policies by those baby boomers who are often in higher-level leadership positions.

 3.  Reflect on your perception of the implications, if any, on gender and leadership.

 4.  Critical Review: Reflect on any sociocultural biases in the text or media.  Is there a hidden bias in the content?  Who has the power of leadership and why?

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

1 Leadership programs indeed need to evolve to cater to the values and preferences of differe... View the full answer