Women ruling the world

So I heard on NPR that Deedee someone or another who used to be in the Clinton administration wrote a book titled something like, “Why Women Should Rule the World.” NPR insists it is not Hillary propaganda.

I should note, I’m hostile to the premise that any particular gender is immune to the throes of ideologic passion and I have no idea what the empirical basis of this book is, so I’m speaking out my ass to some extent. But you need to know I expected not to like this book.

Apparently, Deedee observed that regardless of background, the women of the senate crossed party lines and personal differences to try to work together. By implication, men don’t. She also noted, she’s not saying that the decisions or beliefs would be any more or any less vehemently held. That’s the part I found interesting.

I can accept, theoretically, that men and women have different decision making and social operating methods. Maybe women tend to be consensus builders by wiring more so then men. The implications of that are… interesting.

So why then do men rise more often to the leader position? Well, Deedee noted that women in business decided to pursue other alternatives because the leadership positions are often given to more assertive and aggressive males.

My thought would be that this implies another interesting thing. Do we, as Westerners, if not as human beings, view leaders as aggressively assertive over consensus building? Thus it is not a preference towards males, but towards that leadership style. It may even be hard-wired into the human beast. And wouldn’t that be an interesting thing. That means the “problem” (if it is actually a problem) is in the style, not the gender.

It would also then imply that the women who tend to rise to leadership positions are often the ones who more or less adopt some amount of the masculine aggressively assertive style. In other words, if women ruled the world it would be by adopting an aggressively assertive leadership style. And if the women were using that style and that style is what causes the “problems,” then the result would be no different if women ruled the world.

It is an interesting thing to play with in your head though. If the world’s decisions were made by folks who were more consensus minded rather than directive minded.