Authentic Leaders: Women and Leadership in Australian Unions Before World War II
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Authentic leaders: women and leadership in Australian unions before World War II Author: Frances, Raelene Article Type: Essay Geographic Code: 8AUST Date: May 1, 2013 Words: 11244 Publication: Labour History: A Journal of Labour and Social History ISSN: 0023-6942 The question of leadership in the union movement is not something that has greatly concerned labour historians, industrial relations specialists or leadership theorists. As Harry Knowles notes, apart from the few biographies of prominent individuals, there have been few studies of union leaders. (1) Studies of female union leaders are even more rare. (2) Knowles's 2007 article in the journal Leadership is a recent indication of new interest in this area. His article draws on a wide array of leadership theory to analyse five biographies of Australian Workers Union leaders. In so doing, he successfully demonstrates the value of this collective biographical approach in historicising the study of leadership: he shows how "leadership and the organisation's environment inter-connect to shape the way unions develop over time." (3) This article builds on Knowles's methodological approach to explore the issue of women as union leaders in Australia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By examining the lives of over 30 female union leaders from a range of unions and from across Australia, I hope to chart the parameters of this collective biography in terms of questions about leadership. My questions differ to those asked by Knowles, in large part because the gender of my subjects necessitates different questions. I am interested in why some women aspired to and assumed leadership roles at a time when it was unusual for women to take on such public roles and at a time when trade unions were so strongly a masculine domain. As it was very rare at this time for women to assume the top leadership roles in unions, my study embraces women who showed leadership at a range of levels in their organisation, not just as principal office-bearers. Although the overwhelming majority of the women surveyed embraced some form of left-wing politics, this study also includes women with more conservative leanings who nonetheless held leadership positions in unions. (4) By leadership, I mean the ability to change the way that people think about what is possible and the capacity to work with others to achieve at least some measure of this change. Of the contemporary approaches to the study of leadership, the one I find most helpful in this context is the relatively new concept of "authentic leadership." This theory is still in the process of being refined, but its general parameters are sufficiently clear to offer some insight into a style of leadership particularly common among union women before World War II. This approach has particular implications for contemporary styles of leadership. Observers of the Australian political scene will recall the attempt by the current Prime Minister Julia Gillard to assert her authenticity during the 2010 election campaign: in the wake of accusations that she was being manipulated by the Labor campaign machine, she proclaimed her determination to show the "real Julia," suggesting that she realised the value of authenticity to those she was seeking to lead. Her fluctuating popularity over the subsequent two years also suggests the value of leading from conviction and values rather than responding to a perception of what will be popularly acceptable: her ratings in the polls jumped in the wake of an apparently heart-felt speech condemning the misogyny of her opponent. (5) So what exactly is meant by "authentic" leadership? Shamir and Eilam suggest that authentic leaders exhibit genuine leadership, lead from conviction and base their actions on their values. They are originals, not copies. As well, they maintain that the development of authentic leadership depends heavily on the life story of the leader and the meaning the leader attaches to his or her life experiences. (6) Authentic leadership, as described by Walumbwa and associates, comprises four components: self-awareness, internalised moral perspective, balanced processing and relational transparency. (7) Self-awareness refers to the personal insights of the leader, to the way in which individuals understand their strengths and weaknesses, their core values and motivations and their impact on others. It also includes being aware of and trusting your own feelings. Such self-awareness, the theory argues, provides individuals with a strong basis for decision-making and inspires confidence in others. "Internalised moral perspective" involves a self-regulatory process whereby individuals make their own judgements according to their own set of values rather than relying on the standards and pressures of others. Such leaders are seen as authentic as they behave consistently within clear moral parameters. "Balanced processing" refers to an individual's ability to consider and weigh up a range of information and opinion before reaching a decision. This quality of openness is thus considered an indication of authenticity. "Relational transparency" refers to an individual's tendency to be open and honest in presenting their true self to others. It includes showing both positive and negative aspects of oneself to others in an appropriate manner. (8) In addition to these four factors, theorists have identified three other factors that influence authentic leadership: psychological capacities, moral reasoning and critical life experiences. The positive psychological capacities include confidence, hope, optimism and resilience, traits that can be both innate and developed. (9) Moral reasoning is closely related to "internalised moral perspective" in that it refers to an individual's ability to make ethical judgements and to act for the benefit of the wider community rather than just themselves or their organisation. Critical life events, either positive or negative, also play a part in shaping the particular issues and perspectives that leaders adopt and help them to become stronger leaders. (10) It is my contention that all of the women whose lives and careers have been examined here exhibited these qualities of "authentic leadership," to greater or lesser extent. As previously noted, this theory is very much in its early stages of development. One way in which this theory will develop will be in dialogue with actual empirical case studies, so let us now turn to the women activists from Australia's unions who are the subject of this article. Characteristics of Australia's Female Union Leaders The qualities of the authentic leader are very evident in the case of Lesbia Keogh, better known as the poet Lesbia Harford. Lesbia is unusual amongst female union leaders in that she has left poetry that provides us with an insight into her motivations, emotions and self-analysis. We also have more information about her short life than is the case for similar activists in this period. (11) Lesbia Keogh became active during World War I whilst working as a machinist in a dressmaking factory. Unionism amongst this section of the clothing trade was in its infancy and she quickly rose to a position of leadership and advocacy, representing her workmates on the union executive and on the Victorian Wages Board. Her efforts, alongside those of other women such as May Francis (later Brodney), were instrumental in securing significant improvements in the wages and conditions of female clothing workers. (12) During the course of her career as a trade union and political activist, Lesbia penned this poem, which she titled "Fatherless": I've had no man To guard and shelter me, Guide and instruct me From mine infancy No lord of earth To show me day by day What things a girl should do And what she should say I have gone free Of manly excellence And hold their wisdom More than half pretence For since no male Has ruled me, or has fed I think my own thoughts In my woman's head. (13) Here we have a woman reflecting on how she came to be an independent thinker, attributing this to her positive response to losing her father in childhood--the kind of "critical life experience" imagined within the literature on authentic leadership. Lesbia's father deserted the family when she was about 12 years old, soon after the turn of the twentieth century, leaving her mother to bring up and support the children on her own. Her grandmother had also been a mother and breadwinner, having been widowed at a relatively young age. Both these women provided strong role models of independent womanhood, and also a cautionary example of the perils of relying on men for economic support. There was clearly some poetic licence in this poem as she did have a father until she was 12, but it nevertheless tells a truth about the sense of absence she felt in her crucial years of adolescence and young womanhood, and the legacy of this for her own sense of intellectual and social independence. Although educated at Clifton, the Brigidine convent at Glen Iris, and Mary's Mount, the Loreto convent at Ballarat, as a young woman, Lesbia rejected the Catholicism of her family and conducted services for Frederick Sinclaire's Fellowship group, a dissenting Unitarian group following Sinclaire's brand of Christian socialism. (14) Her adoption of socialist syndicalism when she joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was equally indicative of her determination to reach her own political conclusions. Other women who became union activists and leaders also had family experiences which led them to see reliance on a male breadwinner as a risky strategy, and that working women needed to fight for their own wages and conditions. Agnes Inglis worked as a shirtmaker until her marriage to Henry Milne when she was 22 years old. She had four children, all of whom died in infancy, in the ten years of her marriage before her husband also died.