Good roomie and naughty roomie has a bit of a tiff this evening. No blood on the carpet, thank goodness, but not the best atmosphere at the mo’.
Found a lovely article on my loveliest favoritest news provider, The New York Times: “When Women Rule”, by Nicholas D. Kristof.
While no woman has been president of the United States — yet — the world does have several thousand years’ worth of experience with female leaders. And I have to acknowledge it: Their historical record puts men’s to shame.
Indeed.
Research by political psychologists points to possible explanations. Scholars find that women, compared with men, tend to excel in consensus-building and certain other skills useful in leadership. If so, why have female political leaders been so much less impressive in the democratic era? Margaret Thatcher was a transformative figure, but women have been mediocre prime ministers or presidents in countries like Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines and Indonesia. Often, they haven’t even addressed the urgent needs of women in those countries.
I have a pet theory about what’s going on.
In monarchies, women who rose to the top dealt mostly with a narrow elite, so they could prove themselves and get on with governing. But in democracies in the television age, female leaders also have to navigate public prejudices — and these make democratic politics far more challenging for a woman than for a man.
An interesting proposition.
In one common experiment, the “Goldberg paradigm,” people are asked to evaluate a particular article or speech, supposedly by a man. Others are asked to evaluate the identical presentation, but from a woman. Typically, in countries all over the world, the very same words are rated higher coming from a man.
In particular, one lesson from this research is that promoting their own successes is a helpful strategy for ambitious men. But experiments have demonstrated that when women highlight their accomplishments, that’s a turn-off. And women seem even more offended by self-promoting females than men are.
This creates a huge challenge for ambitious women in politics or business: If they’re self-effacing, people find them unimpressive, but if they talk up their accomplishments, they come across as pushy braggarts.
The broader conundrum is that for women, but not for men, there is a tradeoff in qualities associated with top leadership. A woman can be perceived as competent or as likable, but not both.
Quite true. I quite agree. Yes. Here’s the full article, duckies, though this is the gist. You can also see the comments to the article here, on a NYT blog. Shall we take a peep? Alright then.
Actually, it looks like there aren’t any comments yet. How sad. But look at the editorial and then you can wait anxiously on the edge of your beds for the comments to come round. Right?
Right.
