“Be kind to each other,” Abby Buck, coordinator for fraternity and sorority life at Mississippi State University, told a roomful of young women Saturday afternoon. “… Being a woman in a man’s world is hard enough on its own, so why would we make it harder on ourselves by tearing each other down?”
Buck was one of four panelists at a women’s empowerment brunch Saturday afternoon at MSU’s Bost Auditorium. A yearly event put on by student group IDEAL Woman, the brunch seeks to give good advice to female students who are getting ready to get out in the world, according to President Jalea McCauley.
“We are a leadership program that caters to women on campus,” said McCauley, a senior biochemistry major from Huntsville, Alabama. “We work with leadership development and career and academic success. Every year we host this brunch to allow women professionals to talk to the students about how to build our careers and how they have gotten to where they are in their lives.”
Buck was part of a four-woman panel that included Assistant Dean of Students Jackie Mullen; Kerrigan Clark, graduate assistant for the office of institutional diversity and inclusion; and Kimberly Mason, assistant director for the MSU counseling center.
They answered prepared questions for a little over an hour about the importance of women helping women and common obstacles young women will face over their careers.
Mason was blunt about the biggest barrier to getting more women in leadership positions.
“Females,” she said. “Women stop ourselves. We interfere with our successes. … Oftentimes women get to a certain status and they don’t want to bring other (women) with them, and that’s our biggest downfall. We let people tell us that we can’t, and we don’t pursue certain education levels.”
Mullen agreed.
“Some of the saddest things I’ve seen in my career are people who decided they had to advance their career by one-upping me,” she said. “They had felt they had to put me in my place instead of helping to raise me up. That’s tough to see, and I will be the first to say you will experience that at some point.”
Even so, she encouraged young women to just go for it if they want something.
“Go for it, do it all,” Mullen said. “Whatever you want to do, do it. If that means sacrifice and heartache and all of those things, do it. If you want it, why not? We’re often told something is going to be a lot of work, but life’s hard.”
Women need to help each other, Clark said.
Find and work with good people,” she said. “Find people who are good and who will support you in these challenges and who will be there when you’re down, not just for work but for personal things as well. That circle of people, or maybe it’s just one person, will catapult you to where you want to go.”
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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