Challenges and supports for women conservation leaders

Leadership and inclusivity are increasingly recognized as fundamental to conservation success, yet women's leadership within the conservation profession is understudied. This study identifies gender‐related challenges women conservation leaders experienced in their careers, and supports helping them advance. Using an intersectionality framing to identify intersections between gender, race/ethnicity, age, and leadership position, we conducted and analyzed semi‐structured interviews with 56 women leaders in conservation organizations across the United States. All interviewees reported experiencing or witnessing a gender‐related workplace challenge in at least one of six categories, and the vast majority reported encountering four or more of these challenges: salary inequality and difficulty negotiating, formal exclusion, informal exclusion, harassment and inadequate organizational response, assumptions of inadequacy, and assumptions of wrongness. Participants also experienced two categories of supports: structural supports and supportive relationships. Women's experiences varied based on age, race and ethnicity, and leadership position. Our results indicate more effort is needed to identify effective strategies for making conservation a more inclusive, empowering, and appealing profession in which to work.


| INTRODUCTION
Inclusive, diverse leadership is increasingly recognized as fundamental to conservation success. Conservation scientists and practitioners have argued that the profession will more effectively protect biodiversity if it includes different genders, races, ethnicities, and cultures (Tallis & Lubchenco, 2014) and represents a plurality of values and viewpoints (Matulis & Moyer, 2016). Including local women as knowledge-holders and decision-makers in communitybased conservation has been linked to improved outcomes globally in protected area management (Allendorf & Allendorf, 2012), community forest governance (Agarwal, 2009), fisheries management (Leisher et al., 2015), climate change mitigation (Larson et al., 2015), and water conservation (Kevany & Huisingh, 2013). Women have also been influential leaders of grassroots environmental activism campaigns at local, national, and international scales (Bell & Braun, 2010). However, women's representation in leadership positions within the conservation profession itself has been understudied in peer-reviewed literature. This study aims to address this by extending the research on conservation leadership to analyze women's experiences of genderrelated challenges and supports.
Any discussion about leadership and gender must recognize that gender inequalities operate within many socially constructed systems of privilege that control individuals' access to power, knowledge, and resources (Johnson, 2006). Intersectionality theory (Crenshaw, 1991 is a framework to investigate how intersecting axes of social differenceincluding gender, race, ethnicity, class, age, sexuality, and disability-combine to shape people's heterogenous experiences (Healy, Bradley, & Forson, 2011). In this study we employ an intersectional framing to understand how women conservation leaders' experiences of gender-related challenges interweave with race and age at different levels within organizational hierarchies. In so doing we combine literature on workplace gender inequality with research by feminist political ecologists such as Sundberg (2004, p. 61), who calls for studies "to examine if and how conservation, con-servationists… and researchers are implicated in the (re)production of unequal social relations in the daily discourses, practices, and performances of conservation." A plethora of evidence of gender inequality exists across U.S. society. Women were historically excluded from many leadership positions, and gender parity has yet to be reached at the top of many occupations: women comprise 33% of full professors, 20% of U.S. Congress people, and 6% of Fortune 500 company chief executive officers (CEOs) (Center for American Woman and Politics, 2018;Snyder, Brey, & Dillow, 2018;Zarya, 2017). In conservation, research on a subsection of U.S.-based organizations suggests women occupy most junior positions, for example, internships, but fewer senior positions such as executive directors (Taylor, 2015), and that White women fill more senior leadership roles than women of color, who also navigate racial inequalities (Taylor, 2014).
It has been extensively demonstrated that gender imbalance at the tops of organizations derives at least partially from pervasive gender prejudice and discrimination. Gender discrimination occurs when "women receive fewer leadership opportunities than men even with equivalent qualifications" (Eagly & Carli, 2007, p. 67, emphasis in original), and is rooted in prejudice "result[ing] from the mismatch between the stereotyped attributes that people ascribe to a group and those they ascribe to a particular social role" (Eagly & Carli, 2007, p. 96). Prejudice against women leaders thus derives from people's divergent expectations of leaders and women, and manifests in resistance to women's leadership. Working women often receive less approval than men for the same behaviors, and less support, mentorship, respect, and recognition (McClean, Martin, Emich, & Woodruff, 2017); experience sexually harassment (McLaughlin, Uggen, & Blackstone, 2012); and struggle to appear both competent and warm (Eagly, 2007). Gender discrimination manifests in unequal salary, hiring, and promotion processes (Moss-Racusin, Dovidio, Brescoll, Graham, & Handelsman, 2012). In this paper we use the term "gender-related challenges" to encompass these difficulties. 1 Various supports have been identified that can strengthen women's professional leadership. These include transformed hiring practices, organizational analyses of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), trainings, mentoring programs, role models, championing by senior leaders, women's groups, and peer support. The utility of different support structures has been extensively debated, especially regarding how women's needs vary with inequalities of race, class, and age (Healy et al., 2011) and the tensions between organizations' responsibilities to change and expectations placed on women to navigate unequal systems by themselves (Van Oosten, Buse, & Bilimoria, 2017). These types of support structures can be beneficial to all employees, but are widely recognized as being particularly necessary for people who are disadvantaged in the workplace by social, political, and economic systems of privilege such as gender, as well as race/ethnicity, class, disability, and so on (Shore, Cleveland, & Sanchez, 2018).
Gender equality is considered a human right by the United Nations, and gender diverse leadership correlates with high managerial performance (Dezsö & Ross, 2012), increased organizational profit (Litz & Folker, 2002), and improved employee well-being (Melero, 2011). Gender diversity has been linked to effective conservation: an international comparative study of 46 natural resource management groups found women's participation was associated with significantly more collaboration, reciprocity, persistence, and conflict resolution (Westermann, Ashby, & Pretty, 2005). Similarly, a 10-year study of Fortune 500 companies found companies with women CEOs and on the Board of Directors pursued more environmentally friendly business strategies than those with fewer women (Glass, Cook, & Ingersoll, 2015). The central role women play in protecting biodiversity and preventing climate change at all decision-making levels has been recognized by international targets such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (Alvarez & Lovera, 2016). Given these implications, it is crucial to assess the current situation in the conservation profession. With that aim, we investigated U.S.-based women conservation leaders' perceptions of how gender roles have constrained their careers, and what supports helped them advance.

| Data collection
Interview participants were identified using snowball sampling, beginning with a seed group drawn from the authors' professional networks (Newing, 2011). Participants met five inclusion criteria: self-identify as a woman, be currently based in the United States, work for an organization with a conservation mission, be employed in a leadership role, and have a natural and/or social science background. Using a positional definition of leadership (Bruyere, 2015), participants were considered conservation leaders if they occupied midlevel to senior leadership positions (e.g., scientist/program coordinator through superintendent/executive director). Through these parameters we sought to understand how women occupying central and influential roles felt constrained or empowered within their organizations.
Reflecting our grounding in intersectionality theory, we used purposive sampling to solicit greater participation from women of color, who often encounter distinct challenges given their positions at multiple intersecting axes of discrimination (Crenshaw, 1991). We also used purposive sampling to reach participants of diverse ages, located across the U.S., working at various leadership levels, and based in different organizational types. Interviews were conducted until saturation was reached, that is, additional interviews contributed few novel insights (Newing, 2011).
Potential participants were contacted via email. We contacted 110 women, 79 of whom responded. Ultimately 63 women were interviewed. Interviews were conducted in person (19%), over the phone (44%), and via Skype (37%) from June to September 2016, lasted 45-90 min (averaging 58 min), and were transcribed by the first author and a research assistant. Participants gave verbal informed consent and were informed that their interview would be redacted of personally identifiable information and that they could withdraw from the study at any time.
Semi-structured interview questions (see Supporting Information), derived from a literature review, focused on participants' experiences of gender-related challenges throughout their conservation careers, and supports to overcome those challenges. Demographic information was collected on participants' age, education, race/ethnicity, marital status, children, and location.

| Data analysis
Interviews were analyzed using grounded theory, a systematic methodology for identifying emergent themes and incorporating them into theoretical models (Charmaz, 2014). We first parsed the interviews into concepts (i.e., specific challenges and supports) using initial coding and then, based on comparisons across the transcripts, clustered these concepts into categories using focused coding. Memos were kept throughout. To mitigate acquiescence bias, participants were coded as having experienced particular challenges or supports only when they expounded on their experience (Newing, 2011). Combining grounded theory driven analysis with a deductively developed interview guide allowed us to contextualize the data within the wider intersectionality literature on working women and leadership while allowing for participants' unique conservation experiences. In our analysis we focused particularly on connections participants made between their race/ethnicity, age, leadership level, organization type, and gendered experiences.

| Characteristics of the participants
Fifty-six interviews qualified for analysis based on the inclusion criteria. 2 At the time of the interviews 15 participants worked for federal agencies, five for state agencies, 31 for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and five for other conservation organizations. Three participants self-identified as African American, one as African American-Hispanic, one as Asian American, four as White-Hispanic, and 47 as White non-Hispanic (16% of color, 84% White). Participants' aged ranged from 26 to 64 (median age 44) and were based in 19 U.S. states.

| Gender-related challenges in the conservation workplace
We derived six categories (see Figures 1-3) of genderrelated challenges that participants had perceived experiencing in the conservation workplace. All participants reported experiencing or witnessing a gender-related challenge in at least one category while working in conservation; the vast majority reported experiencing or witnessing a genderrelated challenge in four or more of the six categories.

| Salary inequality and difficulty negotiating
Encompasses women conservation leaders' experiences being paid less than men and/or struggling to negotiate effectively ( Figure 1). Some participants working at NGOs lamented that their organization provided no transparency about salaries, while others at agencies noted mandatory salary transparency merely allowed them to ascertain they were being paid less than male colleagues. Some stressed that even when equity adjustments are made, a legacy of inequality endures: as Participant 19 wondered, "how many years have I been being underpaid?"

| Formal exclusion
Captures women conservation leaders' experiences being denied opportunities to advance or seeing other women denied advancement, particularly by being passed over for promotions ( Figure 1). Participants at NGOs, and federal and state agencies offered recent examples of men in senior leadership positions promoting more junior men over wellqualified women. Several participants noted this seemed most common in senior leadership.

| Informal exclusion
Comprises occasions when women are denied opportunities to participate in decision-making, such as being excluded from scientific and leadership tasks ( Figure 1) F I G U R E 1 Gender-related challenges experienced by women conservation leaders: Salary inequality, formal exclusion, and informal exclusion participants stressed that this occurred across positional and generational power imbalances, with more senior men excluding more junior women and/or older men excluding younger women, while others noted that informal exclusion still occurs despite them having attained senior leadership positions. Participants of color noted informal exclusion that White participants did not, with all but one describing a sense of isolation being the only, or one of the only, people of their race/ethnicity at their organization and in most conservation spaces. Many reported that colleagues tended to exacerbate this through direct comments (positive or negative) and requests that they take on additional DEI work. Participant 39 explained that White women might struggle to sit at the conservation table, but "for women of color-we haven't even stepped into the building."

| Harassment and inadequate organizational response
Encapsulates women conservation leaders' accounts of being harassed and/or sexually harassed at work, and organizations tacitly tolerating this (Figure 2). Many participants emphasized that this occurred across asymmetries in formal and age-related authority, through which older men in senior leadership roles harass younger, more junior women. Some participants in their 40s and 50s reported that although they were no longer objects of harassment, they were still

| Assumption of inadequacy
Encompasses an underlying impression, suggested by men's (and occasionally other women's) statements and actions, that they believe women are incapable of doing conservation science and/or being conservation leaders (Figure 3). Race and ethnicity intersect with gender here: two participants of color reported comments from others demonstrating their assumption that women of color are not (and cannot be) conservation leaders. Participant 61 explained: "most of the time people just don't think that I'm a scientist." Many participants reported experiencing this assumption predominantly when they were younger and less senior, while others experienced it throughout their career. Several observed how men assume women lack fieldwork skills, such as changing truck tires, driving boats, or identifying birds (Participants 8, 56, 11).

| Assumption of wrongness
Encompasses an underlying impression, suggested by men's (and occasionally other women's) statements and actions, that they believe women are unfit for conservation leadership ( Figure 3). Many participants underscored the tension in conservation science between femininity and fieldwork. To appear feminine is to undermine one's credibility as a field scientist, and downplaying one's femininity feels particularly important for younger women, whose credibility may already feel jeopardized by gender and age. Two participants of color stressed the difficulty of disentangling multiple marginalities of race/ethnicity and gender when others assume they are too young to lead. Several participants in their 40s and 50s also noted they are "discounted" for being older (Participant 45). Finally, many participants highlighted that women of all ages and leadership levels struggle to be both assertive and well-liked.

| Supports mitigating gender-related challenges in the conservation workplace
We derived two categories comprising the professional supports that participants described as most meaningful for overcoming obstacles and advancing in their careers (Figure 4).

| Structural supports
Encompasses formal opportunities offered by conservation organizations, societies, and fellowships, and structural changes adopted by conservation organizations. Formal opportunities include mentoring programs, coaching, and trainings in DEI, leadership, and resilience. Structural changes entail efforts by organizations to improve the workplace for women, including assessing diversity, improving harassment policies, and evaluating salaries. Several participants who stressed the benefits of organizational trainings were based at federal agencies, while one worked at a big international NGO (BINGO). Others at BINGOs lamented the lack of funding for leadership development. A few participants suggested that formal opportunities became more accessible as they advanced in rank, but are not always visible: "the resources are there if you ask. Do you know that you can ask? Like, I didn't know!" (Participant 10).

| Supportive relationships
Includes relationships with leaders (advisors, supervisors, upper management, and mentors) and peers (colleagues across organizations). Most participants stressed five categories of important behaviors that leaders of all genders could adopt: provide opportunities, learn women's individual needs, give feedback and guidance, connect women to their networks and champion their work, and demonstrate confidence in women, thus building women's own selfconfidence (see Figure 4 for illustrative quotes). Women leaders specifically were described as providing additional support by being role models: "Seeing women who are competent and in leadership positions is really important too. You can make your own way, but it's definitely harder if you don't see where you can get" (Participant 68). Participants of color emphasized that role models and mentors of their own race/ethnicity are particularly helpful-but often difficult to find. Participants also described support from peers who share experiences of workplace challenges, and men who demonstrate their belief in gender equality. Both leaders and peers provide support by being trustworthy people with whom participants could have honest conversations. Although participants mentioned that some younger male colleagues seem more egalitarian than older men, many underscored that they believe inclusive leadership by older people is essential because of these leaders' greater positional power within organizations.

| DISCUSSION
The six categories of gender-related challenges emerging from our analysis suggest women conservation leaders navigate various forms of gender inequality in the conservation workplace. In our sample gender biases spanned many arenas-including organizational structures, supervisorsupervisee relationships, and interactions with colleagues-and were experienced by women of various ages, working in diverse organizations, and from junior leadership to executive roles. Women of color reported struggling with racerelated informal exclusion and assumptions of inadequacy. Young women encountered more sexual harassment than older women, particularly from older and more senior men, assumptions of inadequacy, and perceptions that femininity is incompatible with field science competence. More senior women reported obstacles to formal promotion. These results corroborate research on women's workplace leadership experiences in STEM and other professions in the United States, and are indicative of widespread sociocultural constructions of gender roles whereby women are often perceived as unfit for or incompatible with leadership, and treated accordingly (Eagly & Carli, 2007;Purcell, Mac-Arthur, & Samblanet, 2010). Questions remain about whether and how these patterns are changing. Many older White participants reported experiencing fewer gender-related challenges as they gained age, experience, and seniority, but complex interactions between these factors preclude easy explanations of causality. Some participants of color emphasized that efforts to increase gender equality in conservation do not automatically transition to racial equality unless race is specifically considered, an observation reinforced by previous research (Bowser, Roberts, Simmon, & Perales, 2012). Participants also described many supports helping them advance that may transform conservation workplaces. Some support structures are issue-specific, such as organizational investigations into salary inequity and sexual harassment. Others, such as leadership and DEI trainings, are more comprehensive efforts to change institutional culture and empower individuals. Supportive relationships with peers and leaders, but particularly those in senior positions, were seen as critical for increasing women's access to opportunities, building women's skills and confidence, normalizing women's representation in senior leadership, and creating inclusive conservation workspaces. These supports may also be useful to all people, regardless of gender. However, these findings reflect the wider literature, where mentorship and inclusivity specifically have been shown to benefit women leaders to help address gender imbalances such as men's tendency to have greater self-confidence than women, and men's disproportionate access to benefits from homophilous (i.e., based on shared characteristics) social networks with more senior male leaders (Purcell et al., 2010;Schipani, Dworkin, Kwolek-Folland, & Maurer, 2009).
Questions remain about whether and how workplace gender inequality undermines conservation's ability to achieve its goals of biodiversity protection and ecological stewardship (Matulis & Moyer, 2016;Tallis & Lubchenco, 2014). The challenges identified here may limit women conservationists' leadership directly, if they are promoted less frequently than men, or indirectly, if they are perceived as less competent or less fitted for leadership. They may also erode women's confidence or lead them to perceive workplaces to be unfair, unwelcoming, or unsafe. For instance, a Department of the Interior study suggests many employees who experience workplace harassment report that it damages their working relationships, undermines their well-being, impairs their work, and prompts them to attempt to leave their job (CFI Group, 2017). Research suggests sexual harassment is also common in scientific fieldwork (Clancy, Nelson, Rutherford, & Hinde, 2014), and women scientists are more likely to quit than women in other professions (Glass, Sassler, Levitte, & Michelmore, 2013). Gender inequality at all levels can thus be deleterious to organizational success.
In this study we used intersectionality theory to explore women conservation leaders' perceptions of how gender identity has affected their careers in interaction with the unique circumstances that different individuals navigate (Healy et al., 2011). Findings suggest that further research could productively apply this framing to disentangle the complexities of doing conservation work globally. For instance, this could include investigation of how perceptions about women's conservation leadership challenges and supports vary across cultures (Straka, Bal, Corrigan, Di Fonzo, & Butt, 2018) or within specific organizations (e.g., Belmaker, 2018), as well as exploration of how women may themselves uphold or dismantle systems of privilege in conservation. More comprehensive investigation is also needed into the perceptions and experiences of women of color in conservation leadership, particularly the differences and similarities amongst their experiences, as well as those of other marginalized groups such as those whose experiences are shaped by social class, sexuality, or gender identity (Bowser et al., 2012;Taylor, 2016). Finally, research is needed to understand how men in conservation perceive and take action about issues of gender, intersectionality, and difference, and to identify actions conservation institutions are undertaking to become more inclusive and just (Bennett, 2018).
Conservation is avowedly a crisis discipline, in which human, technical, and financial capital is widely recognized as insufficient to overcome the environmental challenges we face (Bottrill et al., 2008). It is therefore counterproductive if people working in this field are being subtly and systematically excluded, intentionally or otherwise. More effort is needed to identify effective strategies for making conservation a more inclusive, empowering, and appealing profession in which to work.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by the Human Dimensions of Natural Resources Department at Colorado State University and the Colorado State University Libraries Open Access Research and Scholarship fund. The study was conducted under CSU IRB Protocol 16-6599H. We thank our study participants for giving their time and sharing their experiences.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
J.S. conceived the idea. M.S.J. and J.S. designed the study. M.S.J. collected the data. M.S.J. analyzed the data with support from J.S. M.S.J. led the writing of the manuscript with support from J.S. Both authors approved the final manuscript for publication.

DATA ACCESSIBILITY
Due to possible sensitivity of human subjects' data, interview files and transcriptions are only accessible to the authors.

ETHICS STATEMENT
The study was conducted under CSU IRB Protocol 16-6599H. Participants gave verbal informed consent for their interview to be audio-recorded, transcribed, and disseminated with personally identifiable information redacted.

ENDNOTES
1 Although it was not the focus of this study, it is worth noting that people of all genders can be negatively affected by narratives of masculinity and femininity in the workplace, such as in organizational cultures where men feel they must "prove" their manhood or when men are victims of workplace sexual harassment (e.g., Berdahl, Cooper, Glick, Livingston, & Williams, 2018). 2 Seven of the 63 interviews conducted did not meet the inclusion criteria and thus were excluded from analysis for the following reasons: interviewee was based outside the United States at time of interview (n = 2), was primarily based at an academic institution (n = 1), did not have a science background (n = 1) or leadership role (n = 2), or interview audio-recording quality was too poor for analysis (n = 1).