Women's leadership brings changes in the academy.

A woman colleague once told Dr. Janet Holmgren that pursuing a career as a scientist and leader in higher education was like trying to use a machete to hack her way through the jungle of the academy.

Thankfully, women leaders have moved beyond that exhausting state, said Holmgren, president of Mills College CA. "Although we sometimes wish we had machetes, we would not perhaps wield them in quite the same way we had to 20 or 25 years ago," she said. "We are now in a position to begin thinking about forging those paths a little more deliberately and grandly."

Still, despite the increasing number of women leading schools of higher education, they're a long way from a critical mass, she said. The appointment of several women presidents at Ivy League schools, while certainly cause for celebration, doesn't mean women have "arrived" in higher education or equity has been achieved.

Holmgren spoke at ACE's Fourth Women Presidents' Summit in Washington DC in June.

A good spin

Holmgren sees many small but significant changes for women campus leaders. When her friend Dr. Shirley Tilghman became the 19th president of Princeton University NJ, The Princeton Alumni Weekly headline called her: "Scholar, Scientist and Single Mom."

Her take on this slant? Realizing that one of the first places alumni would attack the first woman president was on her marital and familial status, Princeton masterfully turned it into a virtue. "Because of that concern, [being a single mother] became a virtue, it became a flag to wave: This was something she had accomplished and so she was a highly accomplished woman, said Holmgren. "I like that. I like the fact that when put to the test, our male-dominated patriarchal institutions can rise to the occasion and figure out a way to spin a good story."