When one thinks of California’s Central Valley, what comes to mind may be women toiling alongside their men on the farm. For more than 100 years, a strong patriarchal atmosphere has infused the culture of the San Joaquin Valley.
When I accepted a superintendency in Fresno, Calif., in 2005, I never thought a place like this could exist. Fresno, unlike the metropolitan areas I was accustomed to, had no traffic, supported honest family values and enrolled mostly well-mannered kids in their schools. I left Huntington Beach, Calif., with its fair share of Paris Hilton look-alikes, to live and work in a place with only two shopping malls.
But what eluded me on my first pass of this city was a good old boys’ network that included powerful family ties, tough politicians, entrenched clergy and an elite group of women benefiting directly from the old boys’ system.
My first meeting with community members involved participating in an organization with city business and education leaders. It was indeed an eye-opener. When I entered the oak-paneled meeting room at the local Fresno Compact headquarters and took a seat at the conference table, six smartly dressed men peered over the top of their agendas and looked around at one another as if to gain consensus.
One by one, more men entered the room for what seemed an eternity. At last count, I scanned 15 men — and me!
“Where are the women?” I mused. I was so familiar with the full involvement of women in community and professional groups in Los Angeles and Orange counties. This was indeed a surprise.
Soon after my introduction to Fresno, I realized I would need to find other women leaders with whom to network. I started with some key education leaders and asked them to meet me for dinner.
“I’d love to hear your thoughts on creating a women’s networking group,” said a woman from the Fresno County Office of Education. “You have no idea how lonely some of us are here in the Valley.”
Five of us met soon after to create a group of women leaders in education, and we quickly settled on the name Valley Women in Educational Management, or VWEM for short.
I suspect there are many towns in America much like Fresno that could benefit from the creation of a group like VWEM as a networking outlet for women.
Getting Started
Based on my experience, I’ve compiled five tips for creating and sustaining a womens networking group.
• Tip 1: Research your community and seek out the names of some women in your particular career or interest group. Contact three or four who may be interested in serving as initial steering committee members to spearhead this effort. Meet with your leaders to talk about the need for such a group in your community and decide on a name that reflects the interests of the group.
• Tip 2: Motivate your group to think about what they want to represent and generate some positive goals for what you want to accomplish. The main purpose of our group was essentially to support women leaders as a creative force in education. Our overarching goals were to encourage professional growth among women in leadership positions in education, to recognize and honor their achievements, to support them in balancing their personal and professional commitments and to assist them in expanding their personal and professional relations.
• Tip 3: Once you have your goals outlined, start planning a yearly event calendar. Try to plan two or three events that will draw women and help members to become familiar with the group’s purpose. The opening event for our group was titled Up Close and Personal, and the guest speakers were five highly visible and successful women leaders in education who participated in a panel discussion relative to their dreams, challenges and success stories. Our second event featured a guest speaker who was the first woman dean of social sciences at California State University, Fresno.
• Tip 4: Ensure that all the official business, like distributing bylaws and holding elections, is completed at the first meeting. We filed for nonprofit status before the event and were able to copy some bylaws that fit our group’s needs. It’s fairly typical that members from the initial steering committee will serve as officers. One young steering committee member, a school principal in her 30s, demonstrated tremendous commitment to serving women and was a natural to serve as our networking group’s first executive director.
• Tip 5: Maintain group momentum through motivating themes and interesting events. Our first year’s theme was Breaking New Ground: Cultivating Women Leaders in the Valley. During our second year we concentrated on the theme Fresno Firsts, recognizing many women in central California were “firsts” within their careers.
We were fortunate when four high-ranking Fresno Firsts agreed to join us last fall for an incredible evening of sharing inspirational stories, sincere challenges and solid advice for women aspiring to top positions of leadership, including the area’s first female county sheriff and the first presiding Superior Court judge. The women candidly shared how difficult their journeys had been and discussed the need for women to gain confidence from within. More importantly, they cautioned attendees not to harbor negative thoughts toward men or systems that may have thwarted their access to top positions in leadership.
We rounded out the year with an event focused on Valley women in the political world. Several women with plans to run for political office for the first time joined our network for yet another round of Fresno Firsts in the Central Valley.
Marilou Ryder is superintendent of the Central Unified School District in Fresno, Calif. E-mail: drmlr@yahoo.com