Kathleen Hall Jamieson - Beyond the Double Bind: Women and Leadership

"I can remember", says lawyer Flo Kennedy, "going to court in pants and the judge remarking that I wasn't properly dressed, that the next time I came to court I should be dressed like a lawyer". It was a moment painfully familiar to countless women: a demand that she conform to a stereotype of feminine dress and behavior - which would also mark her as an intruder, rising above her assigned station (as the saying goes, she dared to "wear the pants" in the courtroom). Kennedy took one look at the judge's robe - essentially "a long black dress gathered at the yoke" - and said, "Judge, if you won't talk about what I'm wearing, I won't talk about what you're wearing". In Beyond the Double Bind, Kathleen Hall Jamieson takes her cue from Kennedy's comeback to argue that the catch-22 that often blocks women from success can be overcome. Sparking her narrative with potent accounts of the many ways women have beaten the double bind that would seem to damn them no matter what they choose to do, Jamieson provides a rou