Digital Extra

  3/12/00
R.I. women in public service say road to the top wasn't pretty
Cronyism, pigeonholing and distrust are obstacles women face in their rise to leadership positions in Rhode Island, say some of those who know.

By JENNIFER LEVITZ
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- Sen. Catherine E. Graziano wears on her blazer a pin of the Independent Woman, a takeoff of the Rhode Island symbol atop the State House. She might put a little suit of armor on that brooch.

A woman can rise through the ranks in Rhode Island leadership, but she might get cut with a few shards from the so-called glass ceiling along the way.

Take the experience of Christine Ferguson, the director of the Department of Human Services. When she arrived in 1995, recruited by Governor Almond from a post as a deputy chief of staff for Sen. John Chafee, she thought she had stepped back into the 1950s, she said.

``I was a cocky 36-year-old woman, and everyone I saw wore a white shirt, a blue, yellow, or red tie, and had white hair -- and it wasn't long,'' she said. ``Probably the first two years were the hardest years I've had.''

Through retirements and the hiring of more women the male-dominated atmosphere has lessened, Ferguson said, but her story isn't unusual among women in public leadership roles in Rhode Island, a state known for a close-knit atmosphere that can breed cronyism.

While Maine, Vermont and Massachusetts have women in top government roles, there are no women in the upper ranks of elected government officials in Rhode Island, and no woman in the state has been elected to the U.S. Senate or governor's office -- even though there are more women than men in the state.

Of the 150 General Assembly members, 29 are women. It made big news when Newport Democrat Teresa Paiva Weed became chairwoman in 1997 of the Senate Judiciary Committee, becoming the first woman to oversee a major Assembly committee.

She said then that she was particularly pleased because in Rhode Island, women with leadership potential are often pigeonholed into human-service slots.

Lisa Pelosi, spokeswoman for Governor Almond, is quick to point out that there are many women in the governor's Cabinet. Many, however, are in that human-service slot Paiva Weed referred to. A. Kathryn
Power is director of the Department of Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals. Barbara Rayner is director of the Department of Elderly Affairs. And of course there's Ferguson.

But that's not enough, said Toby Ayers, director of the Rhode Island Commission on Women.

``If you look at the top, you will see that we don't have a female attorney general, a female secretary [of state] or a female lieutenant governor, for example,'' she said.

Ayers said women face a special problem in managing work and family, and face a challenge in raising money for public office, and, she believes, must work harder to show they're credible.

Even women at the top in Rhode Island have felt that. As several of them sat down together in front of a tiny audience at a University of Rhode Island forum on Tuesday to discuss their roads to success, that theme came out often.

ELAINE ROBERTS, executive director of the Rhode Island Airport Commission, said she even wondered whether she'd made a mistake when she first came to Rhode Island in 1994 after serving as deputy director of Indianapolis International Airport.

The work force was only about 17 percent female, and as an outsider and a woman, she faced resentment ``from day one'' from two men who suddenly had to report to a woman ``20 years younger who knew more than they did,'' said Roberts, a no-nonsense Midwest native who
was only the sixth woman in the United States to be accredited for airport management.

``It was a culture shock,'' she said. ``Don't get me wrong, Rhode Island is a beautiful state, but the close-knit environment -- it's what's so great about Rhode Island, but it can also be a negative.''

Ferguson nodded.

``Being a woman in this state is often an issue,'' Ferguson said. ``When I came here, it was painful for everyone.''

And while Roberts said she can point to the fact that a year ago, the two busiest airports in the world -- Atlanta and Chicago -- were run by women, and that several other airports are run by women now, Ferguson said that in Rhode Island, the few women in authority positions are often too busy competing for resources to support each other.

Ferguson, named one of the 25 most influential working mothers in America by Working Mother magazine in 1998, said she got through those first years by doing a lot of listening and putting in a lot of hours.

``If you're young and if you're a woman, you have to establish your credibility through consistency and working with people,'' she said. ``You have to demonstrate your worth; you have to prove that you
can do your job.''

What she didn't do, she said, is confront anyone about it, and ask why they resented her.

``Sometimes, the harder you push, the harder it is,'' she said. ``If you just let it go and don't try to force it, or control it, it's better.''

Roberts said her strategy has always been to find a mentor (hers was a man), to be a ``straight shooter,'' and to never promise something she can't deliver. A person can overcome a lot, she said, with a positive
attitude.

``You've got to be willing to speak up, suggest something new, or raise your hand,'' she said. ``Not just sit there and go along.''

SENATOR GRAZIANO is a 68-year-old grandmother and registered nurse who ran in 1992 because she'd ``had it with Rhode Island politics'' and the scarcity of women in office. She is no outsider; she and her husband have lived in the same Providence house for 45 years, and that's two blocks from the house in which she was raised.

Now she's the cochairwoman of a special legislative committee to study pay equity in Rhode Island, and she is quick to tell you that a review of 1999 earnings suggests it will take women until about April 8 this year
to catch up to what men earned last year.

Graziano has also looked at the salaries of public employees who make more than Almond's $95,000 a year. Of the 242 people who are paid more than the governor, 35 are women, she said.

``It is very difficult as a woman to convince people that you are qualified to hold top-paying jobs,'' she said.

Data from the United States Department of Labor Statistics, appear support Graziano's statement. In a 1998 study, 98 percent of secretaries were women, but females only accounted for 10 percent of engineers, 1 percent of airline pilots and navigators, 18 percent of
architects, and 35 percent of school principals.

Roberts works for a quasi-public agency, but Ferguson and Diana Lam, the superintendent of Providence schools, were both on that list of public employees who make more than Almond.

Lam was hired last year to turn around a faltering system in Providence. She had gained national recognition for raising test scores in reading, writing, and math among inner-city schoolchildren in San Antonio from 1994 to 1998.

Raised in Lima, Peru, by a Chinese truck driver and Peruvian seamstress, Lam faced enough challenges persuading her parents to let her come to the United States for college, and then launching a career in a new country. But gender was ``such an issue'' at every step, she said the other night at the URI program.

Once, as she rose through the administration of the Boston school system, an official told her that she, as principal of a middle school, could not hire a woman assistant because the two females wouldn't be able to handle discipline at the school. So Lam just simply never filled the position.

``I've always been kind of a rebel,'' she said.

AT THE FORUM, the women spoke freely and candidly. But afterward, when they realized that a reporter was in the room, a couple of them became worried that they might have said something that would
offend male coworkers.

Later, as the room at URI's Alan Shawn Feinstein College of Continuing Education cleared out, a woman walked up to Graziano. The woman, who did not want to be named, said she told Graziano that as a welder, she worked with men who did not think welding was women's work. What did Graziano say?

``She told me to tell them to take a flying leap.''