I believe female values are much healthier for society as a whole. I wish the world was run by women. I have a strong hunch we wouldn’t be in this mess.
50 years of feminism has produced nothing of value. I guess those Feminist women suck at their job then. Stop teaching that garbage at universities and we would all be better off.
Ooh…you’re a wise man, Sir. Good for you, for being opened minded and observing women with clear eyes, and for expressing your views. Have you ever heard a song called “Put a Woman In Charge” by Keb’ Mo’ ? It is so good. I’m guessing you would appreciate it. It’s classified as “Blues” music, on Apple Music. The daughter of famed Country Music singer Johnny Cash, Roseanne Cash, sings on it too. I would put a link to the song on here, but I have no idea how to do that. I recall Jacinda Ardern, previous Prime Minister of New Zealand, during the pandemic. She was incredible and such an inspiration.
At the very least, a 50/50 balance of power would probably be more reflective of true human potential than the current 85/15 that is held in place only by violence and fear.
While I’m a staunch feminist, I do think the question needs to change from “who runs the world” to “how can we create a decentralised, localised, close-to-nature, loving communities where power and wealth are not massively concentrated?”
Anarchy doesn’t mean there are no rules; it means there are no rulers. You can still have loving agreements reached in a democratic way between more close knit community members.
Yes. I've increasingly come to the conclusion that the only antidote to the concentration of power and wealth is decentralisation; active participatory democracy and democratic control at all levels. Local, national, international and, crucially, at work.
Speaking from my own experience back in the 1970’s.
I was a member of a trade union in Scotland and a socialist, fighting for equality for all. back then the Trade Union was definitely a male dominated place and defiantly no women in my sector of the job. It seems strange now but back then I worked in the catering department of British Rail and remember when the first women started work there, any older staff laughed and said it wouldn’t last long, some even going out of their way to make life as difficult as possible for the female staff. It was definitely and age/ gender thing, the older the guy the more entrenched they where.
I well remember the arguments we younger unionists had, calling then dinosaurs and their time had past. And I well remember the totally radical idea of having a woman in charge. We would talk about it, plan it, daydream about it. We would say… we tried and look how fucked up things are, surely it’s time for a different perspective, a different way of doing things, it definitely couldn’t get any worse. So we, as a collective, fought for equality for all staff and workers( be they full time or part time, most part time jobs in our industry were held by female staff and they didn’t get the same rights as full time staff). We argued that all staff should be treated the same, that the “ bosses” used the divided workforce to divide and conquer.
My views now might be worded wrong or sound like an old guy talking bullshit etc but we honestly believed that women would bring a totally different perspective, that they would be more nurturing, more empathetic ( I know I’m sounding very stereotypical) more caring and give a totally different slant on things.
Unfortunately, what happened was the complete opposite. Women had to be more “men” than the men were. They had to be tougher, stronger, hard as, to show no emotional attachment to job nor person, which was the exact opposite of what we thought would happen.
Ya e it was just too much to soon, that we jumped ahead of ourselves but we honestly thought in the foolishness of our youth that we were going to change the world.
I’m still all for it, that women should be given the power and the wherewithal to act as they see fit. Luckily I’ve seen a woman in power with the attributes I’d expect ( I’m a resident of New Zealand at the moment) Jacinda Ardern,who briefly showed that it is possible.
Yes, Jacinda Ardern was amazing. During pandemic, I was so wishing we had a clone of her as US President. Looks like we’re going to have our own powerful woman as US President. 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼 Thank you for expressing your views. Very refreshing to hear.
The most influential book I’ve ever read about a utopian society constructed and run by women is “Herland” written in 1915 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. After centuries of brilliant planning of a society devoid of males, females spontaneously become pregnant. Parthenogenesis. Best part is they give birth to females only. Gotta love evolution.
There are aspects of gender leadership, and the alleged default condition of male in front that appear everywhere in the USA. That is because, in my opinion, many of our initial founders were hyper Christian. I remind outsiders that our so called benevolent Puritans left England because they believed the church was too lenient. Yep. Same church that put Shakespeare's father in jail for missing services. In other words, crazy theocrats. The bane of modern America.
I do have a story to share; I recall reading about Sofia Coppola. This was shortly after Lost In Translation, a journalist was watching her make a movie (don't recall exactly which one). Her father, Francis Ford himself, was telling her she wasn't firm enough when saying "action". One got the feeling that he wanted it to be very commanding.
She turns to him, smiles then looks back to the crew. Then at no more than normal room speaking levels, she said "action" and everyone in the crew followed her lead.
Francis Ford's reaction - I don't even recall if it was commented on.
I love this anecdote! It reminds me of Aesop's fable about the contest between the Sun and the Wind. We often default to viewing strength, competence, etc., in narrow, 'masculine' terms, but in reality, they don’t always look that way.
Thank you so much for your article! It totally mirrors my feeling that a world not run by, but with women on an equal footing would be a different world. Where we would not have to assume the need to act like a man, where we would not have to be ‚the better men’ but where we would be cherished for being women and for the feminine perspective we would bring to the table. An equally valuable perspective. A perspective that is missing in a lot of countries, governments, religions and organizations at the moment.
I feel that we have so much to offer that is not valued enough in our still patriarchally structured societies - such a shame and such a loss. So, until we as a society realize how valuable our contribution as women is, to work on the already existing and upcoming problems our world will have to deal with, we unfortunately have to keep fighting to be heard and to be respected for who we are. But I am getting so tired of having to fight, to convince, to be afraid, to proof, to accommodate, to whatever….. the list is long.
Wouldn‘t it be wonderful if we’d be treated as equally worthy partners? Different but equally valuable not in spite of our difference, but because of it? Wouldn‘t it be great to not have to fight against all kinds of obstacles and glass ceilings any more, but if hands would reach out us to pull us to their side……? Just a hopeful idea ….
I commented elsewhere--this is the kind of culture I see with First Nations communities in my area, and it's very much as you describe. Women are liked and valued and are equal in leadership to men. It does seem to produce a really effective, healthy, human-supporting, warm culture.
Hi Katie, Thank you so much for your article. I would like to talk a bit on just leadership change and not broader societal changes. South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh) all three are deeply patriarchal and conservative societies but all three have had female prime ministers for sufficient periods of time in their history. But because it was only a leadership change and not broad-level, the plight of women in all three countries are pretty bad even now. In fact, all the women asserted dominance and strength through their actions (Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency to extend her rule, Sheik Hasina was recently ousted due to her authoritarian regime). I am happy that in the United States, it is a much broader societal change rather than just top leadership change. I hope that the changes in the society further reflects this in the election as well in November.
Jacinda Ardern became Prime Minister of New Zealand aged 37, through a series of twists and turns (primarily the former Labour leader falling on his sword to make way seven weeks out from the election, then the decision of unpredictable 'Kingmaker' Winston Peters, leader of a supporting party, to anoint her PM.) She is a year younger than me. Her election was a thrilling moment for my generation of women. Her term was marked by challenge after challenge: her pregnancy and the birth of her daughter. The White Island disaster. The Christchurch terrorist attack. The Pandemic. She rose to everything. She was adaptable, smart, self-possessed, unshakeable, ethical. During the Pandemic New Zealand escaped the worst of it entirely. The world loved her, many New Zealanders also loved her; and some hated her and wished her dead. The misogynist personal attacks on her were relentless. Eventually she was hounded out of office. She would not admit that the abusive behaviour she received was a factor in her resignation- she said she didn't have 'enough in the tank' to continue as leader.
I'm not an Ardern megafan, I can critique her policies as much as the next person (Centrist, neoliberalist)- but the abuse she received was disgraceful. It was also chilling. The message was to every woman: stick your head above the parapet and this is what you'll get.
Script flipping is a retarded means to justify that male dominated social systems are absurd. When you reverse the order of a power dynamic and say “wow doesn’t this look stupid now”. Of course it looks stupid in the wrong direction.
You used ridiculous and reductive measures to define the overall success of the female societies such as “passed more climate friendly policies” and “happiest country in the world surveys”
This article was childish, grossly simple, and made reaching claims based on ridiculous justification
Wow touched a nerve there hey. I'd suggest that yes, any society that emboldens a man to boldly broadcast the fact of his having misinterpreted the fundamental point of an article, and to throw the use of "retarded" as a pejorative into the mix, is definitely a stupid one. To say the very least.
The sneaky thing she did tho is write it from a male perspective. The main character can’t perceive a gender less person, he keeps ascribing gender to role.
It’s well worth the read if you like to see thought experiments like this played out on a larger scale.
'Clearly, there have always been alternatives. And it’s time we looked beyond the social structures of today, beyond the obsession with dominance-based hierarchies and violence and the rat race that keeps so many of us stuck in self-defeating cycles and imagined something different and better.' - Love this! 🙌
I also like your examples of 'script-flipping take(s) on the patriarchy'. Another interesting read is 'The End of Men' by Christina Sweeney-Baird, which I read a few years ago. It's not very medically accurate, but is good food for thought.
The governments of which you speak are often ones who have governed according to persuasive religious influence, as you show, and theocracies treat women as aberrations who cause problems (e.g. Eve and the apple). Likewise, women have been victimized by bullshit scientific beliefs constructed about them without their consent or input on similar secular terms. And still, in the 21st century, they are victimized as much by men who wish to maintain or increase their sociopolitical power at womens' expense, even more than they are physically or mentally abused at an individual level.
Excellent post ..thank you ..now if we can just figure out how to get rid of the obvious problems like MTG, Boebert and many on Fox News .. those are all some terrifying women…
Okay, interesting article, and good on the historical/anthropological research, but there's lots of recent examples of what the world actually looks like when women hold power.
BTW, just to be clear, I'm firmly on the left, and support every single progressive cause you could name. But I also support a dispassionate review of available evidence. In my opinion, the world should have far more female leaders. But there's nothing magic about a woman that means she'll be better than a man.
So, lets see. There's Margaret Thatcher, the war monger who sent a naval fleet to Las Malvinas to kill Argentinian and British men just so that a bunch of penguins and sheep could have British passports, and who opposed sanctions against apartheid South Africa, and ended up as one of most despised and divisive prime ministers Britain ever had.
And then there's the genocidal Aung San Suu Kyi, responsible for the ethnic cleansing and murder of Rohingya.
Let's not forget Indira Ghandi, who ordered the Indian army to murder protesters at the holy site of Amritsar (and was then disposed of by her Sikh body guards shortly afterwards).
Or how about the woman who sought to erase an entire people by saying, "There was no such thing as Palestinians".
And what about the woman who ran for president of the USA in 2016 and had the arrogance to openly denounce half of its population as a "basket of deplorables"?
Oh, and don't forget Sheikh Hasina, deposed just last month after her security forces refused to carry out her order to continue murdering innocent protestors on the streets of Bangladesh.
And of course there's Theresa May, the British prime minister who had been responsible for deliberately creating a "hostile environment" for immigrants, and oversaw the unlawful deportation of British citizens of Caribbean origin (Windrush Scandal), and who thought it would be a good idea to send vans to drive around areas with high immigrant populations telling them to "go home".
And an honourable mention for our beloved Liz Truss, who managed to crash the UK economy in just 49 days, making her the most disastrous, and the craziest prime minister that Britain has ever had.
And last and least, who are the most openly racist politicians in Australia, France and Italy? Pauline Hanson, Marine Le Pen and Giorgia Meloni.
You're proving Katie's point. All of the women you listed here bought into, and reinforced, patriarchy. It's explicitly that sort of settling for the status quo, even among some powerful women, that she's rejecting.
I do believe that doubling down is the traditional male response to having their worldview questioned. They ignore the failings of their own gender but attack the percentage of women leaders that don't follow our author's preferred solution. The bell curve wins, there will be outliers, some even extremely so. But one woman making bad decisions balances out millennia of male atrocities. It is only fair., so he says.
I think Katies "double bind" point is a bit of a post-hoc fudge by us progressives. i.e. when the woman's star is rising, we can hail her as an example of female empowerment, but when the woman turns out bad then we can always retrospectively denounce her as having bought into the patriarchy. We can have our cake and eat it.
The proof of this argument is that it's extremely rare for a woman to be denounced as having bought into the patriarchy when her star is rising.
Really? You don't think people who criticise Thatcher, Hasina, The Lettuce, Meir, etc in retrospect weren't also deeply sceptical of their credentials when they were on the ascent? And even for those who weren't - are they not entitled to change their opinion of someone when it turns out that they really are just awful human beings??
The very fact you can list a bunch of toxic women in the highest positions of power fairly comprehensively testifies to how few there have been - now I'd challenge you to list all of the equivalent men. When that majority has shaped a world hierarchy predicated on toxic traits, is it any wonder that many of the women who do make it to "the top" of that hierarchy have been supreme shits?
You'll note that many of Katie's examples repudiate entirely our commonly accepted notions of hierarchy (she does take some time to discuss that) so I don't think you're making the point you think you're making. Nor do I think it's having cake and eating it at all. I think you're citing some widely-acknowledged arseholes as strawman (woman?) arguments to try and disprove her key points, when really you're complementing them.
“However, some studies find that due to long-standing stereotypes of female leaders as ‘weak’ and ‘ill-suited’ for the job, they sometimes tend to compensate for this perceived weakness by acting more aggressively.
That’s the thing we can’t forget about. Women in powerful leadership roles, but on a still largely male-dominated planet, have to navigate a maze of double-binds and act ‘masculine’ enough to be seen as competent but also not ‘too masculine’ to be unlikeable (this is the ‘warmth-competence tradeoff’). After all, our idea of leadership is still rooted in traits historically associated with men: dominance, aggression, and assertiveness.
And so, if all male heads of state were replaced by women, while keeping cultural norms the same, I wouldn’t expect radical changes. Perhaps this world run by women would eventually start to resemble the dystopian nightmare some imagine: men being treated by women the way men have treated them for centuries. If whoever is in charge rules the others with an iron fist and not with compassion, empathy, and cooperativeness (considered ‘feminine’ traits) in mind, then the results will always be bleak.”
I don't agree. Katie links to a 2019 paper "Why can’t a woman be more like a man? Female leaders in crisis bargaining" This paper finds that, in militarized international disputes, "Female-led states are more likely to have their disputes reciprocated and are consequently more likely to forcefully escalate a dispute than male-led governments." There is no finding in this paper to explain why certain female leaders exhibit particularly non-compassionate, aggressive, or cruel behaviour in domestic affairs, of which I gave many examples. It's always dangerous to extrapolate beyond the scope of the paper being cited, and I don't think Katie's citation was appropriate in this instance.
It's also relevant to note the original "double bind" theory arises from papers such as "Eagly, A. H. (1987). Sex differences in social behavior: A social role interpretation." and subsequent papers (which Katie doesn't cite). The finding of those papers only relate to corporate leadership, not state leadership, and were summarised thus in a 2017 paper "when women leaders observe societal gender role expectations and exhibit feminine behaviors, they are seen as weak, but when they observe organizational role expectations and exhibit masculine behaviors, they risk being seen as aggressive. As a consequence of this double bind, any course of action can result in negative evaluations of women’s leadership capacity". There was no finding in these papers that women leaders "sometimes tend to compensate for this perceived weakness by acting more aggressively", as Katie said in the article. What Katie seems to have done is to conflate the findings from the two strands of papers - one which deals with militarized international conflicts, and can be support an argument of compensatory aggressiveness, and the other strand dealing with corporate leadership, which sets out the double bind, but doesn't mention compensatory aggressiveness - if anything its argument is that women are "bound" by societal expectations to not exhibit compensatory aggressiveness. That's one of the two binds in the double bind.
Finally, as an aside, you mention that compassion, empathy, and cooperativeness are "considered ‘feminine’ traits". Whilst it's true that that is how these traits are "perceived", so far as I am aware, despite tons of research in the field, there is no conclusive finding that these traits have larger effects sizes in women than in men.
I think the word "conclusive" is doing a lot of work in your last sentence there. There are literally hundreds of studies showing that on average, women are more compassionate, empathetic, and pro-social, looking at everything from EEGs to reactions to emotional videos to self-reports, to dictator/donation games, to rates of real-world donations to charities intended to help the weak/vulnerable. Yes, the most compassionate men are equally as compassionate as women. But the least compassionate men are far less so, and on average by group, women are found to be more compassionate/pro-social at a statistically significant level.
The only way in which you can realistically call that "inconclusive" is just that NO social science is ever conclusive, and there are a few outlier studies don't get these results. But for the most part, it's very well established, just like increased male aggression is, in every country studied.
Yes, you're absolutely right. I thought I'd deleted that last sentence, and certainly should have done. I was thinking of a different point, which isn't relevant here, and my thoughts got scrambled.
And Jacinda Ardern, former NZ Prime minister , who’s fake “kindness” masked a bunch of terrible policies, not least signing of multiple free trade agreements that help the rich get richer such as CPTPP, RCEP, EU FTA and UK FTA and cover over a third of the globe (despite explicitly campaigning on *not* supporting these), who’s policies gave the police an even greater monopoly on violence, who aggressively censored anyone who disagreed with her, who’s policies led to significant job losses (90% of which were lost by women in care work), whose policies led to Māori peacefully protesting getting hammered by police whether it be to retain sovereignty over their ancestral lands or protect the environment or for constitutional transformation (including one young Māori man that had significant fractures from the police getting him in a position almost identical to George Floyd), and whose net worth suddenly went from $800K to $30 million after the signing of a top secret contract with a multinational corporation…Oh and whose policies literally killed and harmed a bunch of people but she refused to listen or do anything about it because of said contract.
And who openly said she was comfortable creating a underclass / dividing Nz into two classes of people, one group that had all the rights and privileges and another that didn’t.
Oh and who did nothing to call out “likeminded” countries’ genocidal policies, use of torture, etc.
And let’s also not forget Kamala Harris’ disastrous policies both domestically and internationally: not least her support of Israel’s genocidal actions and silencing of pro-Palestinian protestors at her rallies:
Maybe women-led villages and households are better in smaller, more localised, decentralised villages. But not in the corporatocracy, this genocidal, ecocidal, military industrial complex based global hegemonic power structure.
Do we really want more women who are heads of PepsiCo, Monsanto, Goldman Sachs, ExconMobil, drug lords, CIA, BlackRock, Vanguard, Lockheed Martin, DuPont, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib? Or should we rather do away with the power structure that leads to the creation and massive growth in power of these types of entities?
The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house…
Yes it is “feminine” qualities such as empathy and care and love that will ultimately save us and make the world a better and more sane place. The same qualities that have been so lacking when the murderous tyrannical regime of corporations hungrily began devouring the world. But I don’t think putting women in charge of all the murderous entities will magically make them less murderous.
Not least because men need to change too!! It’s always the way that when a company (or the planet) is going to hell in a hand basket they put a woman in charge then blame her when she can’t unf*ck everything.
These are token women leaders in societies still firmly controlled by men. That's the only kind of woman leader those men in power allowed. That's very different from a world where power is shared 50/50 from the ground up, at all levels. There are fewer examples of that, which the article does describe, if you would reread it.
I really enjoyed this thoughtful piece, thank you. It's true that we're so used to swimming in the waters of hierarchical order that we fall into the trap of thinking this organization has to stay the same, and only changing leaders makes a difference (when the far greater opportunity is to change the whole system. Brava! I'd like to be part of that new world - a genuinely collaborative one.
I believe female values are much healthier for society as a whole. I wish the world was run by women. I have a strong hunch we wouldn’t be in this mess.
I believe so, too. It's a shame they were (and still are) perceived as less important.
50 years of feminism has produced nothing of value. I guess those Feminist women suck at their job then. Stop teaching that garbage at universities and we would all be better off.
Ooh…you’re a wise man, Sir. Good for you, for being opened minded and observing women with clear eyes, and for expressing your views. Have you ever heard a song called “Put a Woman In Charge” by Keb’ Mo’ ? It is so good. I’m guessing you would appreciate it. It’s classified as “Blues” music, on Apple Music. The daughter of famed Country Music singer Johnny Cash, Roseanne Cash, sings on it too. I would put a link to the song on here, but I have no idea how to do that. I recall Jacinda Ardern, previous Prime Minister of New Zealand, during the pandemic. She was incredible and such an inspiration.
And I believe that male and female values are equally important and compliment each other. Some of us prefer democracy and equality.
Merit matters, not what is between our legs.
At the very least, a 50/50 balance of power would probably be more reflective of true human potential than the current 85/15 that is held in place only by violence and fear.
While I’m a staunch feminist, I do think the question needs to change from “who runs the world” to “how can we create a decentralised, localised, close-to-nature, loving communities where power and wealth are not massively concentrated?”
Anarchy doesn’t mean there are no rules; it means there are no rulers. You can still have loving agreements reached in a democratic way between more close knit community members.
Yes. I've increasingly come to the conclusion that the only antidote to the concentration of power and wealth is decentralisation; active participatory democracy and democratic control at all levels. Local, national, international and, crucially, at work.
Speaking from my own experience back in the 1970’s.
I was a member of a trade union in Scotland and a socialist, fighting for equality for all. back then the Trade Union was definitely a male dominated place and defiantly no women in my sector of the job. It seems strange now but back then I worked in the catering department of British Rail and remember when the first women started work there, any older staff laughed and said it wouldn’t last long, some even going out of their way to make life as difficult as possible for the female staff. It was definitely and age/ gender thing, the older the guy the more entrenched they where.
I well remember the arguments we younger unionists had, calling then dinosaurs and their time had past. And I well remember the totally radical idea of having a woman in charge. We would talk about it, plan it, daydream about it. We would say… we tried and look how fucked up things are, surely it’s time for a different perspective, a different way of doing things, it definitely couldn’t get any worse. So we, as a collective, fought for equality for all staff and workers( be they full time or part time, most part time jobs in our industry were held by female staff and they didn’t get the same rights as full time staff). We argued that all staff should be treated the same, that the “ bosses” used the divided workforce to divide and conquer.
My views now might be worded wrong or sound like an old guy talking bullshit etc but we honestly believed that women would bring a totally different perspective, that they would be more nurturing, more empathetic ( I know I’m sounding very stereotypical) more caring and give a totally different slant on things.
Unfortunately, what happened was the complete opposite. Women had to be more “men” than the men were. They had to be tougher, stronger, hard as, to show no emotional attachment to job nor person, which was the exact opposite of what we thought would happen.
Ya e it was just too much to soon, that we jumped ahead of ourselves but we honestly thought in the foolishness of our youth that we were going to change the world.
I’m still all for it, that women should be given the power and the wherewithal to act as they see fit. Luckily I’ve seen a woman in power with the attributes I’d expect ( I’m a resident of New Zealand at the moment) Jacinda Ardern,who briefly showed that it is possible.
Yes, Jacinda Ardern was amazing. During pandemic, I was so wishing we had a clone of her as US President. Looks like we’re going to have our own powerful woman as US President. 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼 Thank you for expressing your views. Very refreshing to hear.
The most influential book I’ve ever read about a utopian society constructed and run by women is “Herland” written in 1915 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. After centuries of brilliant planning of a society devoid of males, females spontaneously become pregnant. Parthenogenesis. Best part is they give birth to females only. Gotta love evolution.
I haven't read this one yet, but it sounds fascinating!
There are aspects of gender leadership, and the alleged default condition of male in front that appear everywhere in the USA. That is because, in my opinion, many of our initial founders were hyper Christian. I remind outsiders that our so called benevolent Puritans left England because they believed the church was too lenient. Yep. Same church that put Shakespeare's father in jail for missing services. In other words, crazy theocrats. The bane of modern America.
I do have a story to share; I recall reading about Sofia Coppola. This was shortly after Lost In Translation, a journalist was watching her make a movie (don't recall exactly which one). Her father, Francis Ford himself, was telling her she wasn't firm enough when saying "action". One got the feeling that he wanted it to be very commanding.
She turns to him, smiles then looks back to the crew. Then at no more than normal room speaking levels, she said "action" and everyone in the crew followed her lead.
Francis Ford's reaction - I don't even recall if it was commented on.
I love this anecdote! It reminds me of Aesop's fable about the contest between the Sun and the Wind. We often default to viewing strength, competence, etc., in narrow, 'masculine' terms, but in reality, they don’t always look that way.
I remember getting the advice at one point that if you really want people to lean in and listen to you, don’t shout, whisper.
Thank you so much for your article! It totally mirrors my feeling that a world not run by, but with women on an equal footing would be a different world. Where we would not have to assume the need to act like a man, where we would not have to be ‚the better men’ but where we would be cherished for being women and for the feminine perspective we would bring to the table. An equally valuable perspective. A perspective that is missing in a lot of countries, governments, religions and organizations at the moment.
I feel that we have so much to offer that is not valued enough in our still patriarchally structured societies - such a shame and such a loss. So, until we as a society realize how valuable our contribution as women is, to work on the already existing and upcoming problems our world will have to deal with, we unfortunately have to keep fighting to be heard and to be respected for who we are. But I am getting so tired of having to fight, to convince, to be afraid, to proof, to accommodate, to whatever….. the list is long.
Wouldn‘t it be wonderful if we’d be treated as equally worthy partners? Different but equally valuable not in spite of our difference, but because of it? Wouldn‘t it be great to not have to fight against all kinds of obstacles and glass ceilings any more, but if hands would reach out us to pull us to their side……? Just a hopeful idea ….
I commented elsewhere--this is the kind of culture I see with First Nations communities in my area, and it's very much as you describe. Women are liked and valued and are equal in leadership to men. It does seem to produce a really effective, healthy, human-supporting, warm culture.
Hi Katie, Thank you so much for your article. I would like to talk a bit on just leadership change and not broader societal changes. South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh) all three are deeply patriarchal and conservative societies but all three have had female prime ministers for sufficient periods of time in their history. But because it was only a leadership change and not broad-level, the plight of women in all three countries are pretty bad even now. In fact, all the women asserted dominance and strength through their actions (Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency to extend her rule, Sheik Hasina was recently ousted due to her authoritarian regime). I am happy that in the United States, it is a much broader societal change rather than just top leadership change. I hope that the changes in the society further reflects this in the election as well in November.
Thank you for your thoughts, Piyush! I agree. Leadership change without accompanying societal shifts can only go so far.
Jacinda Ardern became Prime Minister of New Zealand aged 37, through a series of twists and turns (primarily the former Labour leader falling on his sword to make way seven weeks out from the election, then the decision of unpredictable 'Kingmaker' Winston Peters, leader of a supporting party, to anoint her PM.) She is a year younger than me. Her election was a thrilling moment for my generation of women. Her term was marked by challenge after challenge: her pregnancy and the birth of her daughter. The White Island disaster. The Christchurch terrorist attack. The Pandemic. She rose to everything. She was adaptable, smart, self-possessed, unshakeable, ethical. During the Pandemic New Zealand escaped the worst of it entirely. The world loved her, many New Zealanders also loved her; and some hated her and wished her dead. The misogynist personal attacks on her were relentless. Eventually she was hounded out of office. She would not admit that the abusive behaviour she received was a factor in her resignation- she said she didn't have 'enough in the tank' to continue as leader.
I'm not an Ardern megafan, I can critique her policies as much as the next person (Centrist, neoliberalist)- but the abuse she received was disgraceful. It was also chilling. The message was to every woman: stick your head above the parapet and this is what you'll get.
Script flipping is a retarded means to justify that male dominated social systems are absurd. When you reverse the order of a power dynamic and say “wow doesn’t this look stupid now”. Of course it looks stupid in the wrong direction.
You used ridiculous and reductive measures to define the overall success of the female societies such as “passed more climate friendly policies” and “happiest country in the world surveys”
This article was childish, grossly simple, and made reaching claims based on ridiculous justification
Wow touched a nerve there hey. I'd suggest that yes, any society that emboldens a man to boldly broadcast the fact of his having misinterpreted the fundamental point of an article, and to throw the use of "retarded" as a pejorative into the mix, is definitely a stupid one. To say the very least.
You're embarrassing us my man.
Your comment reeks of feminine rhetoric
Thanks!
Why do use an ableist slur in your user name?
No. It is an ableist slur. It shouldn't be used at all.
So sorry your delicate sensibilities got offended
I finished ‘The Left Hand of Darkness’ by Ursula Le Guin. She imagines a world without gender.
It falls somewhere between our hierarchical world and a fully egalitarian flat society.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Left_Hand_of_Darkness
The sneaky thing she did tho is write it from a male perspective. The main character can’t perceive a gender less person, he keeps ascribing gender to role.
It’s well worth the read if you like to see thought experiments like this played out on a larger scale.
This book sounds right up my alley! Thanks for the recommendation.
I second this recommendation. Also The Dispossessed
'Clearly, there have always been alternatives. And it’s time we looked beyond the social structures of today, beyond the obsession with dominance-based hierarchies and violence and the rat race that keeps so many of us stuck in self-defeating cycles and imagined something different and better.' - Love this! 🙌
I also like your examples of 'script-flipping take(s) on the patriarchy'. Another interesting read is 'The End of Men' by Christina Sweeney-Baird, which I read a few years ago. It's not very medically accurate, but is good food for thought.
Thank you, glad you appreciated it!
The governments of which you speak are often ones who have governed according to persuasive religious influence, as you show, and theocracies treat women as aberrations who cause problems (e.g. Eve and the apple). Likewise, women have been victimized by bullshit scientific beliefs constructed about them without their consent or input on similar secular terms. And still, in the 21st century, they are victimized as much by men who wish to maintain or increase their sociopolitical power at womens' expense, even more than they are physically or mentally abused at an individual level.
Excellent post ..thank you ..now if we can just figure out how to get rid of the obvious problems like MTG, Boebert and many on Fox News .. those are all some terrifying women…
There's a reason those particular women are picked to be elevated by those groups of men. It isn't democracy that put them there.
Okay, interesting article, and good on the historical/anthropological research, but there's lots of recent examples of what the world actually looks like when women hold power.
BTW, just to be clear, I'm firmly on the left, and support every single progressive cause you could name. But I also support a dispassionate review of available evidence. In my opinion, the world should have far more female leaders. But there's nothing magic about a woman that means she'll be better than a man.
So, lets see. There's Margaret Thatcher, the war monger who sent a naval fleet to Las Malvinas to kill Argentinian and British men just so that a bunch of penguins and sheep could have British passports, and who opposed sanctions against apartheid South Africa, and ended up as one of most despised and divisive prime ministers Britain ever had.
And then there's the genocidal Aung San Suu Kyi, responsible for the ethnic cleansing and murder of Rohingya.
Let's not forget Indira Ghandi, who ordered the Indian army to murder protesters at the holy site of Amritsar (and was then disposed of by her Sikh body guards shortly afterwards).
Or how about the woman who sought to erase an entire people by saying, "There was no such thing as Palestinians".
And what about the woman who ran for president of the USA in 2016 and had the arrogance to openly denounce half of its population as a "basket of deplorables"?
Oh, and don't forget Sheikh Hasina, deposed just last month after her security forces refused to carry out her order to continue murdering innocent protestors on the streets of Bangladesh.
And of course there's Theresa May, the British prime minister who had been responsible for deliberately creating a "hostile environment" for immigrants, and oversaw the unlawful deportation of British citizens of Caribbean origin (Windrush Scandal), and who thought it would be a good idea to send vans to drive around areas with high immigrant populations telling them to "go home".
And an honourable mention for our beloved Liz Truss, who managed to crash the UK economy in just 49 days, making her the most disastrous, and the craziest prime minister that Britain has ever had.
And last and least, who are the most openly racist politicians in Australia, France and Italy? Pauline Hanson, Marine Le Pen and Giorgia Meloni.
You're proving Katie's point. All of the women you listed here bought into, and reinforced, patriarchy. It's explicitly that sort of settling for the status quo, even among some powerful women, that she's rejecting.
I do believe that doubling down is the traditional male response to having their worldview questioned. They ignore the failings of their own gender but attack the percentage of women leaders that don't follow our author's preferred solution. The bell curve wins, there will be outliers, some even extremely so. But one woman making bad decisions balances out millennia of male atrocities. It is only fair., so he says.
Said doubling down was noted.
I think Katies "double bind" point is a bit of a post-hoc fudge by us progressives. i.e. when the woman's star is rising, we can hail her as an example of female empowerment, but when the woman turns out bad then we can always retrospectively denounce her as having bought into the patriarchy. We can have our cake and eat it.
The proof of this argument is that it's extremely rare for a woman to be denounced as having bought into the patriarchy when her star is rising.
Really? You don't think people who criticise Thatcher, Hasina, The Lettuce, Meir, etc in retrospect weren't also deeply sceptical of their credentials when they were on the ascent? And even for those who weren't - are they not entitled to change their opinion of someone when it turns out that they really are just awful human beings??
The very fact you can list a bunch of toxic women in the highest positions of power fairly comprehensively testifies to how few there have been - now I'd challenge you to list all of the equivalent men. When that majority has shaped a world hierarchy predicated on toxic traits, is it any wonder that many of the women who do make it to "the top" of that hierarchy have been supreme shits?
You'll note that many of Katie's examples repudiate entirely our commonly accepted notions of hierarchy (she does take some time to discuss that) so I don't think you're making the point you think you're making. Nor do I think it's having cake and eating it at all. I think you're citing some widely-acknowledged arseholes as strawman (woman?) arguments to try and disprove her key points, when really you're complementing them.
Katie answered this in the article:
“However, some studies find that due to long-standing stereotypes of female leaders as ‘weak’ and ‘ill-suited’ for the job, they sometimes tend to compensate for this perceived weakness by acting more aggressively.
That’s the thing we can’t forget about. Women in powerful leadership roles, but on a still largely male-dominated planet, have to navigate a maze of double-binds and act ‘masculine’ enough to be seen as competent but also not ‘too masculine’ to be unlikeable (this is the ‘warmth-competence tradeoff’). After all, our idea of leadership is still rooted in traits historically associated with men: dominance, aggression, and assertiveness.
And so, if all male heads of state were replaced by women, while keeping cultural norms the same, I wouldn’t expect radical changes. Perhaps this world run by women would eventually start to resemble the dystopian nightmare some imagine: men being treated by women the way men have treated them for centuries. If whoever is in charge rules the others with an iron fist and not with compassion, empathy, and cooperativeness (considered ‘feminine’ traits) in mind, then the results will always be bleak.”
I don't agree. Katie links to a 2019 paper "Why can’t a woman be more like a man? Female leaders in crisis bargaining" This paper finds that, in militarized international disputes, "Female-led states are more likely to have their disputes reciprocated and are consequently more likely to forcefully escalate a dispute than male-led governments." There is no finding in this paper to explain why certain female leaders exhibit particularly non-compassionate, aggressive, or cruel behaviour in domestic affairs, of which I gave many examples. It's always dangerous to extrapolate beyond the scope of the paper being cited, and I don't think Katie's citation was appropriate in this instance.
It's also relevant to note the original "double bind" theory arises from papers such as "Eagly, A. H. (1987). Sex differences in social behavior: A social role interpretation." and subsequent papers (which Katie doesn't cite). The finding of those papers only relate to corporate leadership, not state leadership, and were summarised thus in a 2017 paper "when women leaders observe societal gender role expectations and exhibit feminine behaviors, they are seen as weak, but when they observe organizational role expectations and exhibit masculine behaviors, they risk being seen as aggressive. As a consequence of this double bind, any course of action can result in negative evaluations of women’s leadership capacity". There was no finding in these papers that women leaders "sometimes tend to compensate for this perceived weakness by acting more aggressively", as Katie said in the article. What Katie seems to have done is to conflate the findings from the two strands of papers - one which deals with militarized international conflicts, and can be support an argument of compensatory aggressiveness, and the other strand dealing with corporate leadership, which sets out the double bind, but doesn't mention compensatory aggressiveness - if anything its argument is that women are "bound" by societal expectations to not exhibit compensatory aggressiveness. That's one of the two binds in the double bind.
Finally, as an aside, you mention that compassion, empathy, and cooperativeness are "considered ‘feminine’ traits". Whilst it's true that that is how these traits are "perceived", so far as I am aware, despite tons of research in the field, there is no conclusive finding that these traits have larger effects sizes in women than in men.
I think the word "conclusive" is doing a lot of work in your last sentence there. There are literally hundreds of studies showing that on average, women are more compassionate, empathetic, and pro-social, looking at everything from EEGs to reactions to emotional videos to self-reports, to dictator/donation games, to rates of real-world donations to charities intended to help the weak/vulnerable. Yes, the most compassionate men are equally as compassionate as women. But the least compassionate men are far less so, and on average by group, women are found to be more compassionate/pro-social at a statistically significant level.
The only way in which you can realistically call that "inconclusive" is just that NO social science is ever conclusive, and there are a few outlier studies don't get these results. But for the most part, it's very well established, just like increased male aggression is, in every country studied.
Yes, you're absolutely right. I thought I'd deleted that last sentence, and certainly should have done. I was thinking of a different point, which isn't relevant here, and my thoughts got scrambled.
The problem was that women had to show they were “ man enough “ for whatever job they did, this is still the case in many countries
And Jacinda Ardern, former NZ Prime minister , who’s fake “kindness” masked a bunch of terrible policies, not least signing of multiple free trade agreements that help the rich get richer such as CPTPP, RCEP, EU FTA and UK FTA and cover over a third of the globe (despite explicitly campaigning on *not* supporting these), who’s policies gave the police an even greater monopoly on violence, who aggressively censored anyone who disagreed with her, who’s policies led to significant job losses (90% of which were lost by women in care work), whose policies led to Māori peacefully protesting getting hammered by police whether it be to retain sovereignty over their ancestral lands or protect the environment or for constitutional transformation (including one young Māori man that had significant fractures from the police getting him in a position almost identical to George Floyd), and whose net worth suddenly went from $800K to $30 million after the signing of a top secret contract with a multinational corporation…Oh and whose policies literally killed and harmed a bunch of people but she refused to listen or do anything about it because of said contract.
And who openly said she was comfortable creating a underclass / dividing Nz into two classes of people, one group that had all the rights and privileges and another that didn’t.
Oh and who did nothing to call out “likeminded” countries’ genocidal policies, use of torture, etc.
And let’s also not forget Kamala Harris’ disastrous policies both domestically and internationally: not least her support of Israel’s genocidal actions and silencing of pro-Palestinian protestors at her rallies:
https://open.substack.com/pub/caitlinjohnstone/p/bad-on-foreign-policy-but-good-on?r=qdiky&utm_medium=ios
Maybe women-led villages and households are better in smaller, more localised, decentralised villages. But not in the corporatocracy, this genocidal, ecocidal, military industrial complex based global hegemonic power structure.
Do we really want more women who are heads of PepsiCo, Monsanto, Goldman Sachs, ExconMobil, drug lords, CIA, BlackRock, Vanguard, Lockheed Martin, DuPont, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib? Or should we rather do away with the power structure that leads to the creation and massive growth in power of these types of entities?
The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house…
Yes it is “feminine” qualities such as empathy and care and love that will ultimately save us and make the world a better and more sane place. The same qualities that have been so lacking when the murderous tyrannical regime of corporations hungrily began devouring the world. But I don’t think putting women in charge of all the murderous entities will magically make them less murderous.
Not least because men need to change too!! It’s always the way that when a company (or the planet) is going to hell in a hand basket they put a woman in charge then blame her when she can’t unf*ck everything.
These are token women leaders in societies still firmly controlled by men. That's the only kind of woman leader those men in power allowed. That's very different from a world where power is shared 50/50 from the ground up, at all levels. There are fewer examples of that, which the article does describe, if you would reread it.
Hillary was right about the basket of deplorables. She still is.
You still use that fake word racist??
Nobody cares about it anymore . You guys used it to death. 💀 and you are still using it. It’s so ridiculous.
Nobody is scared of that word anymore, buddy.
LOL the same people who said they would get rid of immigrants and took in 20 times more. WHAT A JOKE.!!!
I really enjoyed this thoughtful piece, thank you. It's true that we're so used to swimming in the waters of hierarchical order that we fall into the trap of thinking this organization has to stay the same, and only changing leaders makes a difference (when the far greater opportunity is to change the whole system. Brava! I'd like to be part of that new world - a genuinely collaborative one.
Iceland!