Lt. Governor encourages educators to be activists.

Academia and government are very different spheres for women's leadership, but government deeply affects the lives of women in higher education. It's time for academic women to start influencing government in return, Wisconsin Lt. Governor Barbara Lawton said in her keynote address at the Wisconsin Women in Higher Education Leadership (WWHEL) conference in October 2003.

Hoping to inspire a contagious "wish to be very bold," she described herself as an unrepentant feminist. The state branch of NOW named her Feminist of the Year in 1999, during her closely watched election campaign. Two younger women at the NOW award ceremony said they'd prefer a different word, since feminist conjured up images of 1970s bra burners. Oblivious to the TV cameras, Lawton responded, "I am a woman of a certain age, and the ashes are in an urn on my mantelpiece with pride."

Community activist and consultant, she's on the board of the Northeastern Wisconsin Technical College Educational Foundation. She's an advisory board member to the Green Bay Multicultural Center and Women's Political Voice and a founding member of Green Bay's Educational Resource Foundation and Latinos Unidos.

Putting into action Lawton's commitment to multicultural, educational and women's issues from the state capitol requires voter support. Now's not the time for academics to just watch from the sidelines.

Universities and government

While married, living in Green Bay and raising two children, Lawton graduated summa cum laude from Lawrence University in 1987. Later she commuted to Madison for graduate work in Spanish at the University of Wisconsin (MA 1991). She came to love Latin American literature but she hated academic politics. "Electoral politics is kids' day at the park compared to academia," she said. Electoral politics has more watchdogs. Academia is competitive in areas that are completely subjective.

Evaluation of leaders' performance in the corporate sector is based on the financial bottom line; in government it's based on election returns. But evaluation of college and university leaders is subjective, not linked to hard numbers like dollars or votes.