OREM — Utah Chief Justice Christine Durham said this week's nomination of another woman to the nation's highest judicial body is a step toward breaking stereotypes about women in positions of power.

"The more (female) role models that young girls see in public life, the better," Durham told The Deseret Morning News Tuesday.

Durham has spent a great deal of her life in the limelight as the first woman appointed to serve as a judge in 3rd District Court, then the first woman to be named to the Utah Supreme Court. In 2002, she was named Utah's first female chief justice.

"I learned leadership comes in all shapes and sizes," she said. "I didn't look to them what they expected a leader to look like. Sometimes you have to overcome those barriers." And for women, she said, those barriers are most common in politics and national leadership positions.

While it is still too early for Durham to predict what barriers Harriet Ellan Miers may have to deal with — or her impact on court dynamics, if she eventually gains a seat on the nation's top court — she believes Miers' time in the public eye will be influential.

After all, Durham says, the U.S. population is made up of men and women, so why should the court be any different?

"We don't expect judges who are women or minorities to determine cases differently but to enhance the degree of public trust in the fairness (of judicial bodies)," Durham said.

When Durham and Miers graduated from law schools — Duke and Southern Methodist University — 2 percent of practicing attorneys were women, Durham said.

"The world has changed enormously during my lifetime," she told a group of almost 1,700 high school and junior high school students at Utah Valley State College Tuesday. "It's going to change enormously during your lifetime. The way you find things now is not the way things are always going to be. The questions with leadership are what are you going to do with the new world you find?"

Durham concluded a morning of talks and programs by reminding students that true leadership begins with the individual but should always be focused on the greater good.

"Leadership requires a capacity for self-transcendence," Durham said. "I think the true leaders are the people who are able to look outward and onward in terms of their own activities and live to bring other people along with them."

As steps to that end, she challenged the students to find their own personal styles and strengths, to appreciate the talents of others while not discounting their own. She also reminded the students that they must not be paralyzed by a fear of failure.

There is "one piece of hope," she said at the end of her comments. "It gets easier. Life doesn't get easier — the problems get harder — but your ability to solve them grows."