Friday, March 9, 2012

Trend: Women Running Think Tanks

David Callahan writes on the Policy Shop blog at Demos in an article titled "Women Leaders at Progressive Think Tanks," that in the past year women have taken the helm at four national think tanks:
  • Janice Nittoli at the Century Foundation
  • Neera Tanden at Center for American Progress (CAP)
  • Felicia Wong at the Roosevelt Institute
  • Sarah Rosen Wartell at Urban Institute
Mr. Callahan notes that think tank leadership has traditionally been a "male-dominated sector."  Will the trend continue?

Also worth reading is this Foreign Policy article by Michael Zenko titled "City of Men," which looked at the gender breakdown of ten prominent foreign policy think tanks.
"After crunching the numbers, which were culled from their publicly available rosters, I found that women constituted only 21 percent of the policy-related positions (154 of 723) and only 29 percent of the total leadership staff (250 of 874). The Center for Strategic & International Studies and Center for American Progress boasted the highest percentages of women in policy-related roles (28 percent), and the Stimson Center had the highest total percentage of women in all positions (50 percent)."