It's Not About the Gun: Lessons from My Global Career as a Female FBI Agent

When former FBI Agent Kathy Stearman read in The New York Times that sixteen women were suing the FBI for discrimination at the training academy, she was surprised to see the women come forward—no one ever had before—but the truth behind their accusations resonated. After a twenty-six-year career in the Bureau, culminating in becoming FBI Legal Attaché, the most senior FBI representative in a foreign office, she knew from personal experience that this type of behavior had been prevalent for decades. When she entered the FBI Academy in 1987, Stearman was one of about 600 women in a force of 10,000 agents. While there, she evolved into an assertive woman, working her way up the ranks and across the globe to hold positions that very few women have held before. And yet, even at the height of her career, she had to check herself to make sure that she never appeared weak, inferior, or afraid. The accepted attitude for women in power has long been cool, calm, and in control—and sometimes that means coming across as cold and emotionless. Stearman changed for the FBI, but she longs for a different path for future women of the Bureau. If the system changes, then women can remain constant, valuing their female identity and nurturing the people they truly are. In It's Not About the Gun, she describes how she was viewed as a woman and an American overseas and how her perception of her country and the FBI, observed from the optics of distance, has evolved.