Lessons From the Front Lines

I've paid a high price for it. Because you're in the public eye, working on public buildings, people feel they can poke fun. The worst point was when they decided not to build the Cardiff Bay Opera House after we'd won the competition in 1994. When they started talking about me personally, or my family, or my nationality, or how I spoke, it became quite shocking. It was very nasty. It was unpleasant for everyone that I worked with. I moved on, and it prepared us
for the next phase when we started winning all these competitions: the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati; the MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome; and the Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg.

Gender isn't the only way I'm different. I came from a situation in Iraq in the '60s and '70s where it was all about new ideas, nation-building and progressive thinking. I really believed in the new. I took on modernity. I had less luggage because I was displaced—it gave me tremendous freedom. Sometimes it's useful being different.

Baroness Patricia Scotland, U.K. Attorney General
When I came to the bar in 1977, diversity was still seen as an obstacle, not an asset. People told me there were two impediments that would prevent me from becoming a successful barrister: my gender and my color—two things I would never want to change (even if it were possible!). I refused to let their issues determine my aspirations or my desires to help others. My mother was a great mentor to me. She instilled a strong sense of self-worth in all of her 12 children, and empowered us with the confidence and independence to pursue our dreams. My father was the greatest feminist I have ever known. He taught my sisters and me that we were no different from his sons and expected great things from all of us. He always made it plain that there is no disgrace in failure. The disgrace is in not having tried. I would say to people starting off: be brave, have courage, believe in yourself. Everything worth having is worth fighting for.

Yuriko Koike, Former Cabinet Minister, Japan
There aren't many female role models, not in Japan. I faced a big challenge as environment minister. Global warming is an important issue, but it's also abstract. My way of doing things [as a leader] is to break down that good cause into a specific goal. I told people that we needed to save energy and that we were going to do it by turning down the air conditioning in summer and the heater in winter. So that it wouldn't become unbearable, we relaxed the traditional strict requirements for officewear. That's how Cool Biz was born. The reaction was fantastic. I realized then that it's about getting people to participate, to share a feeling that is immediate in their own lives.

As a leader, you need to make clear what you stand for, where you are heading and what you are trying to achieve and by when. I was able to accomplish a major job with a limited budget with this approach—that is, to reduce a huge problem to the level where ordinary people work every day. Having a shared goal and a sense that we are in this together enhances people's motivation.

Oddly enough, that harked back to an experience I had as a college student in Cairo. I didn't have much in the way of resources back then, so I had to find some part-time work. I ended up working as a tour guide. I would take Japanese tourists to see the sights. I realized that I needed to show them the sights in a way that inspired them, made them realize they had seen something.

When I became defense minister, I was the first woman to hold the job. I faced several big tasks that included reaffirming our relationship to the United States and boosting the motivation of our people. I realized you couldn't make policy in the same old way as the men had done before me. It's an institution with 270,000 people.

So I decided to make a change in management style. Before I became the minister, it was a 20th-century-style ministry. It was all about tanks and planes and machines. A modern defense policy in our country has to be more about taking care of the people who are doing the job, and more about paying attention to personnel issues, to quality of life, as a way of improving motivation. In this way, I was attempting to achieve a paradigm shift as a female leader.

Yes, men still have a lot of say in Japan, but it's interesting how often the fact I am a woman can actually help me. Of course, the fact we have more women in politics nowadays can help. When I was a national-security adviser, one of my key jobs was strengthening the alliance with the United States. And it was particularly interesting to be doing this at a time when one of the partners on the other side, Condoleezza Rice, also happened to be a woman.

Perhaps it's a peculiarity of the Japanese situation, but I cannot say there are a lot of female role models for women of my generation in Japan. There was a pathbreaking health minister, Masa Nakayama, who's kind of a hero to me. Outside of Japan, one of my biggest heroes is Margaret Thatcher. You can sum her up in a single word: determination. She's the one who said, "I'm more interested in conviction than in consensus." That's an attitude that I admire.

Dalia Itzik, Speaker of the Knesset, Israel
Mother is uneducated, but knows everything. I remember the trauma of my early years, after our family arrived in Jerusalem from Iraq in the late 1950s. We were eight children living in a tiny two-room apartment. Four were born in Iraq and four were born in Israel. My father was a drinker. Because of his drinking, he couldn't function well. So my mother ran the family. My mother is an uneducated person. She scarcely knows how to read. But she's a very strong, impressive woman. She's naturally intelligent. She didn't preach to us. She didn't push us. But we knew she knew almost everything. It was intuitive for her. She was the model for my later ambitions and career.

My dream was to be a teacher. If someone told me when I was in my 30s that I was going to be a politician, my answer would have been, "What kind of pill did you take?" Then, in 1989, while serving as a head of the Jerusalem teachers union, I was recruited by Teddy Kollek, the legendary mayor of Jerusalem, to become deputy mayor. Jerusalem is a very difficult city. You have everything; it's a microcosm of Israel. But you have to watch your step.

I didn't need much coaxing to move on to party politics, as a member of Knesset from the Labor Party. My roles included minister of the environment, industry and trade, and minister of communication. During the great political shuffle of 2006 I joined the new Kadima Party under the leadership of Ariel Sharon. As the Speaker of the Knesset, during the turbulent days of the Second Lebanon War, I took upon myself the role of preserving national unity across the aisle, in support of the government. In January 2007 I became acting president of Israel, a role I filled until July of the same year.