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<\/p>\nMy older daughter, Sarah, currently a college student, earned praise for her essay on the leadership role of women. With her permission and no small measure of pride, I share it with you.<\/p>\n
The assignment was:\u00a0Some theorists have suggested that the world would be a much better place to live (i.e., fewer conflicts, wars) if women held all the positions of leadership. Do you agree? Why or why not? Do women in positions of power tend to behave in more stereotypically female (caring, nurturing) or male (aggressive, dominant) ways?<\/em><\/p>\n Would the world be better off if it was run by women?\u00a0 This deceptively simple question is best broken down into components: Are individual women better leaders than individual men?\u00a0 Does the culture of leadership drive women in positions of power to behave in stereotypically male ways?\u00a0 And, What is the effect when the majority of leaders in the legislative space are female?<\/p>\n The first two sub-questions are related.\u00a0 Are individual women superior leaders?\u00a0 Perhaps not, because for every Jacinda Ardern or Angela Merkel there may be a Margaret Thatcher or Marine Le Pen.\u00a0 Perhaps the character traits expected by the electorate, and the strategies employed by powerful women to attain and defend their status, weeds out individuals who behave in a cooperative, nurturing manner.\u00a0 It is quite plausible that the culture of power, or the traits demanded of leaders regardless of gender, is so pervasive that the theoretical advantages of female leadership are eliminated.\u00a0 What does the data show?<\/p>\n A Forbes analysis indicated, and an academic analysis later confirmed, that the countries which fared best during the pandemic were led by women: Germany, Taiwan, New Zealand, Iceland, Finland, Norway and Denmark all took the pandemic seriously and took early steps to safeguard health.\u00a0 This association has been found to be systematic among a sample of 194 countries (Garikipati & Kambhampati, 2020).\u00a0 Iceland\u2019s Prime Minister Katr\u00edn Jakobsd\u00f3ttir instituted free testing, while Taiwan\u2019s Tsai Ing-wen instituted 124 pandemic-curbing measures early, in January of 2020, and by April were sending face masks abroad.\u00a0 Their success is punctuated by the expression of traditionally feminine traits: Norway\u2019s Prime Minister Erna Solberg went on live television to reassure children that it was okay to feel scared.\u00a0 Just try to catch a strong-man leader such as Bolsonaro or Putin doing that! (Wittenberg-Cox, 2020)<\/p>\n Female leadership was a clear advantage, and life-saver, during the pandemic.\u00a0 However, the benefits are less clear-cut when it comes to warfare.\u00a0 Though the perception that women would be less likely to go to war is popular and widespread, the counter-examples of Margaret Thatcher ordering the sinking of the Argentine ship Belgrano<\/i> in 1982 and of the \u201cdangerously aggressive\u201d North Korean President Park Geun-hye who was in office 2013-2017 prove that gender is not entirely protective against military aggression. (Elsesser, 2022)\u00a0 The authors of \u201cWhy Leaders Fight\u201d determined that 30% of male leaders initiated at least one militarized dispute, while 36% of female leaders did so; however, in part due to the disparity of sample sizes, these statistics are misleading: this 36% of female leaders equates to 13 acts of aggression and one war, while the 30% of male leaders who did so equates to 694 acts of aggression and 86 wars (ibid).\u00a0 Writing for Cambridge, Schwartz & Blair (2020) found that female leaders \u201ccombat gender stereotypes that women are weak by acting \u2018tough\u2019 during international military crises.\u201d\u00a0 They also found that female leaders experienced greater \u201cinconsistency costs\u201d when backing down from threats than their male counterparts, which may pressure them to follow through.\u00a0 In military action at least, we do find that the cultures of power and of male leadership pressure female leaders to behave in more stereotypically masculine aggressive ways, and they are less able to back down from threats.<\/p>\n The behavior of female leaders in military situations appears to be an effect of conforming and performing to masculine leadership culture.\u00a0 What happens when the leadership environment is female-majority?\u00a0 Here we turn to the example of Nevada, the legislature of which became female-majority (51%) in 2018.\u00a0 In 2019, this legislature took action to compensate firefighters who develop breast, uterine and ovarian cancer; required companies of a certain size to provide 40 hours of paid leave; specified fines for companies which knowingly practice gender pay discrimination; made critical reforms to their abortion laws and restrictions; and passed a series of laws addressing sexual assault and domestic violence. (Cheung, 2020)\u00a0 Even though female legislators were barely in the majority, they immediately made life substantially better for Nevada women and workers.<\/p>\n Therefore, although female executive leaders in military situations currently feel pressure to conform to masculine stereotypes to defend their leadership worth, we may conclude that a world leadership stage which is female-majority would be beneficial to the globe.\u00a0 Female leaders made superior decisions during the pandemic, and female-majority legislative spaces (or at least, the sole example currently available) take care of their residents in arenas long neglected by male representatives.\u00a0 Therefore, the world would indeed be better off if it was run by women.<\/p>\n Cheung, Helier. \u201cDid First Female-Majority Legislature in US Make a Difference?\u201d BBC News, 4 Mar. 2020, bbc.com\/news\/world-us-canada-51623420.<\/p>\n Elsesser, Kim. \u201cSheryl Sandberg Says Female Leaders Don\u2019t Go To War. Here\u2019s What Research Says.\u201d Forbes, 8 Mar. 2022, forbes.com\/sites\/kimelsesser\/2022\/03\/08\/sheryl-sandberg-says-female-leaders-dont-go-to-war-heres-what-research-says\/.<\/p>\n Garikipati, Supriya, & Kambhampati, Uma. \u201cLeading the Fight Against the Pandemic: Does Gender \u2018Really\u2019 Matter?\u201d SSRN, 3 June 2020, papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3617953.<\/p>\n Schwartz, J., & Blair, C. (2020). Do Women Make More Credible Threats? Gender Stereotypes, Audience Costs, and Crisis Bargaining. International Organization, 74(4), 872-895. doi:10.1017\/S0020818320000223<\/p>\n Wittenberg-Cox, Avivah. \u201cWhat Do Countries With The Best Coronavirus Responses Have In Common? Women Leaders.\u201d Forbes, 13 Apr. 2020, forbes.com\/sites\/avivahwittenbergcox\/2020\/04\/13\/what-do-countries-with-the-best-coronavirus-reponses-have-in-common-women-leaders\/?sh=229b60233dec.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My older daughter, Sarah, currently a college student, earned praise for her essay on the leadership role of women. With her permission and no small measure of pride, I share it with you. The assignment was:\u00a0Some theorists have suggested that the world would be a much better place to live (i.e., fewer conflicts, wars) if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,14,17],"tags":[629],"class_list":["post-2402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","category-nonfiction","category-rants","tag-women-leaders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2402"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2404,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402\/revisions\/2404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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