From Lucky to Worthy

by Kelsie Poe

A few months ago I went to an on-campus retreat about women’s leadership. I was excited to meet with undergraduate women, talk to them about leadership styles, and what problems they had while leading. Our keynote speaker, Valerie Hennings, really struck a chord with me. Hennings discussed the issues facing women in leadership, citing attribution theory as one reason for a lack of women in leadership positions. Attribution theory looks at where we attribute our successes and failures within our lives, and the evidence shows that men and women are generally opposite in their attributions. It hurts me to see women attributing successes to external factors and failures to internal factors while men generally do the opposite. We were asked to take control of our leadership and take responsibility for what we were achieving.

After we learned about attribution theory in the morning, we had a panel of guest speakers in the afternoon who held prominent roles in the surrounding community. One woman, in describing her life story and successes, said she was so lucky to have been given the opportunities in her past and hoped that all of the young women in the room would have the great fortune of experiencing those moments.