Northwestern women networked with prominent alumnae Thursday at the 13th annual Women in Leadership Banquet, which featured a speech by author and former magazine editor Marilyn Moats Kennedy.
The event was sponsored by the Center for Student Involvement and Northwestern University’s Council of 100, a group of female alumnae who provide career counseling, mentoring and job placement services for NU women.
Council members sat with students in the Purdue Room at Norris University Center, eating and discussing classes and internship searches.
After dinner Kennedy took the podium, beginning her speech by highlighting the progress women have made in recent decades.
“In order to really appreciate what is going on in the world today, you have to go back 50 years,” Kennedy said. “If you look at ’50s movies, women are engaged in competitive housekeeping, competitive child rearing and competitive cooking. They lived in a stereotype that said, ‘You must stay home with your children, and we will judge you if they are not perfect, if your house is not perfect.'”
Although women may not be expected to be housewives anymore, Kennedy, who was the former editor of the job strategies section of Glamour magazine, stressed that there is no shame in not pursuing the new stereotype of the successful, driven woman. Kennedy encouraged the female students to make time for all the things that make them happy, rather than trying to rapidly propel themselves into success followed by early retirement.
“You are going to have it all — but not at the same time,” Kennedy said. “If you knew you were going to live to be 90, and all of you will, why do you need to rush everything into the first 30 years? People who retire are so bored.”
Candace Walker, a Weinberg senior, said she agreed with Kennedy’s message.
“I feel like it’s difficult to know where the role of women is going,” Walker said. “I feel better knowing I don’t have to be married or be the CEO right now. I don’t think we hear that enough.”
One of the major problems Kennedy said she sees for all students coming out of academically driven universities such as NU is the belief that successful people must have high-powered careers.
“What is going to be a constant in your life is what you really like and what you really hate,” Kennedy said. “Start by deciding what you don’t want to do and move in by process of elimination. Consider self-employment. Consider creating a niche that no one can take away from you.”
Although women have come a long way since the days when women in the workplace were a rarity, Kennedy still warned students to prepare for discrimination.
“You are going to meet prejudice in the workplace, but it’s going to be subtle, and you won’t meet it until you’re in your 40s,” Kennedy said. “It’s not worth it when you’re 23. They wait until you’re competition. You’re going to hear people say ‘But Martha has two kids. Do you think she can handle it?’ If you want it, you have to say yes, and if you can’t get it there, go somewhere else. Living well is the best revenge.”
