No stopping until we reach the top

It’s time to look at March, “Women’s History Month” as more a celebration of our future: let’s call it “Women Making History Month.”

Stereotypes still stand in our way. Only two-thirds of adults in this country think a woman could be president, according to a CNN/Opinion Research survey. Meanwhile, state legislatures - the farm teams for future leaders - have only one-quarter representation by women, a pitiful ratio that has remained unchanged for a decade.

The U.S. ranks 69th in the world for women’s legislative representation with only 16 percent women in Congress.

We’re missing a lot and it doesn’t have to be this way. The leaders of some countries have realized that it really does matter who makes the decisions. They see what our leaders have not yet recognized: having more women at the top is good business and smart politics. For example, in Norway, women make up 36 percent of the members on corporate boards, while in the U.S. progress seems stalled at not quite 15 percent.

Smart leaders in Norway and other countries realize that the talent base of the future will have as many women as men. In an increasingly competitive world, no business or nation that fails to tap that talent is likely to succeed. We need to play catch-up and focus on women’s advancement as a key part of our competitiveness. The World Economic Forum ranks women’s advancement by country, the U.S. has now fallen to 31st.

What an irony, then, that in the U.S., the talent pipeline is filled with women. By 2010, women are expected to hold 60 percent of the nation’s wealth. Since 1996, a higher proportion of women than men have graduated from college, and the trend is only expected to accelerate. But we’ll continue to waste a lot of that talent unless we transform our outmoded model of “only men need apply” leadership.

Ultimately, more women joining the ranks of decision-makers will make us more competitive as we leave the past behind and utilize the creativity, energy and skill of more of our citizens.

This March, it is not enough to look backward. Women in the United States have plenty more to accomplish; we plan to make history, in the best sense of that phrase. But the mind-set that “American women are doing fine, thank you” clouds the reality that we need more women at the top to make the tough calls.

Women’s future and the country’s future are the same. Let’s celebrate that - and go make some history.

Linda Tarr-Whelan is a senior fellow at Demos, a think tank, and a former Ambassador to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women.