Ellen Bravo is a published author and executive director of 9 to 5, National Association of Working Women based in Milwaukee. She has dedicated much of her adult life to eliminating sexual harassment on the job, and toward helping define the term "sexual harassment" itself. Bravo is recognized as a leader among working women, but little research has been conducted into her leadership style. This research examines her life and her leadership, and evaluates how others can learn from Bravo's example in this field.
Born in 1944, Bravo is one of three children raised in the midwest by parents who initially maintained a traditional one income, one full-time homemaker partnership in their marriage. As the children grew older, Bravo's mother returned to work in order to save money for the children's college education (college was an expectation for all three children). When Bravo's father was unable to work for an extended period after being injured in an accident, Bravo learned that her mother's wages were significantly lower than her father's, ostensibly because her mother was a woman. This close-to-home encounter with pay inequity made a strong and lasting impression on Bravo, and influenced her later activities ("Ellen Bravo" 39).
Bravo received a bachelor of arts degree from Cornell (where she studied Greet and Latin literature) and later earned a master's degree. Her studies took her to Cambridge University as a Fulbright scholar, and she also studied at McGill University. Politically active from an early age, Bravo participated in Vietnam war protests. By the early 1970s, Bravo was teaching women's studies courses at St. Mary's College of Maryland and at San Diego University in California.
Despite her education and her later "feminist" views, Bravo's life mirrored that of many women of her generation. She married and had two children, and stayed at home to raise her sons. By the early 1980s, however, economics requir...