Women in leadership: an untold story: and it is the story of one woman's leadership in particular--Barbara Hackman Franklin.

• Author: Stout, Lee
• Position: LEADERSHIP - Reprint

Ed. Note: In 1971 President Richard Nixon named Barbara Franklin to be a special assistant and charged her with the responsibility of recruiting women for executive service and leadership in government. "This was an extraordinary milestone; there had never been a person specifically tasked with such a role in the entire history of American government," observes Lee Stout, author of A Matter of Simple Justice: The Untold Story of Barbara. Hackman Franklin and A Few Good Women, published in March 2012 by Penn State University Press. Stout, librarian emeritus of the Penn State University Libraries, chronicles how the Nixon administration expanded the role of women in the American work-force. He traces how Franklin nearly quadrupled the number of women in high-level government jobs -- many of which were never before held by women, such as a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisors and commissioner of the Atomic Energy Commission. The book also collects oral histories of many of these prominent women who describe their experiences during this "gender revolution."

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Barbara Hackman Franklin is a familiar name to DIRECTORS & BOARDS readers. She has written a number of thought-leadership articles for the journal over the past 20 years. Following her government service she was eagerly sought out for corporate board positions and has had a distinguished career as a corporate director and consultant on global business issues. (She returned to government service in 1992 as President George W. Bush's Secretary of Commerce, the highest-ranking woman to serve in the Bush administration.) She currently is serving as chairman of the National Association of Corporate Directors.

Longtime DIRECTORS & BOARDS readers will recall her important contribution to another oral history project -- the "Oral History of Corporate Governance," a special compilation of leaders in corporate governance reflecting on the evolution of U.S. corporate boards. Published in the 25th anniversary edition of DiREcroRs & BOARDS, issued in 2001, Franklin recounted what it was like to be in the early wave of women joining corporate boards in the late 1970s and early '80s, as more boardrooms were beginning to open up to female executives -- an untold story in its own right (see excerpt on page 42).

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What follows here are edited passages from A Matter of Simple Justice (www.amatterofsimplejus-tice.com), copyright 2012 The Pennsylvania State University Libraries, reprinted with permission of the publisher. -- James Kristie

AT HIS FEBRUARY 6, 1969, news conference, President Richard M. Nixon announced details of his upcoming European trip and then proceeded to take questions. Near the end of the news conference, which was dominated largely by foreign and defense issues, Vera Glaser, of the North American Newspaper Alliance, rose and asked, "Mr. President, in staffing your administration, you have so far made about 200 high-level Cabinet and other policy position appointments, and of these only three have gone to women. Can you tell us, sir, whether we can expect a more equitable recognition of women's abilities, or are we going to remain a lost sex?"

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The president, in only his second formal press conference, 17 days after the inauguration, "rolled his eyes upward for a moment in a kind of sighing chagrin," as one reporter put it. He then smiled at Vera Glaser and quipped, "Would you be interested in coming into the government?" There was some laughter, but apparently realizing that the issue...