But I have one point of contention. The women have had an injection of testosterone.
See the excerpts from the article below. It's an analysis of
ideas presented by an anthropologist who is interested in basic sex differences that amount to male and female talents. She has an interesting perspective.
She claims that some of women's strengths are just now being revealed to us, and can be traced to adaptive origins.
Language skills and the ability to negotiate are two strengths attributed to women. I would say that's fair, and that both are obvious political assets. Certainly we can appreciate the new speaker's oratory abilities.
As you can see below, the strengths she points to are related to negotiation. That is what legislators do. Good ones get more of what they want.
Interesting points about hierarchies vs. rank.
We are currently in a situation where we want to "flatten a government" that has given too much power to the top rank. Who better to restore democracy than women whose basic tendencies trend toward lateral governance?
What beautiful irony that they can use their surge of testosterone to combat macho politics.
http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/march2000sargent.htm"Fisher then points to one woman who decided to become a detective as proof that women will be especially suited for that job. Why?—because women rely on cunning. Women are also making their way onto police forces (13 percent are women) because police departments have begun to realize women are outstanding at coaxing perpetrators into squad cars. Also, women can sweet talk criminals into confessing.
What!?!
Women are particularly suited for mediation because of their evolutionary heritage. Female chimps, says Fisher, were skilled at settling disputes and she guesses that ancestral women were too. This explains, I assume, why 26 percent of lawyers, 80 percent of legal assistants, and 50 percent of law students are now women. It does not explain why 90 percent of judges are men or why women are only 13 percent of the partners in the largest law firms—but no matter."
<snip>
"A 1998 report by the Council on Foundations canvassed 667 major American Foundations and found that, of 4,580 staff, 75 percent are women. Ninety-two percent of the support staff are women; 68 percent of program officers and 50 percent of all CEOs are women; whereas less than 5 percent of CEOs and board members of Fortune 500s are women. Fisher determines from this that clearly women are more likely to be in the foundation world, not the corporate world.
Fisher writes: “Arabs call women the grave diggers of dynasties, presumably because women can undermine established political orders with their facility for meeting, talking, and planning outside officially approved channels.” This will increase. According to Jessica Mathews of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the concentration of power in the hands of states, which began in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia, is over, at least for awhile. We are not told why or how. But this is, conveniently, good news for women. You see women are not drawn to this form of power—as leaders of governments, perhaps because women are less comfortable than men in rigid, hierarchical formal settings."
<snip>
"Women have never held more than 9 percent of the seats in the U.S. Senate or more than 12.6 percent in the House. Women have never occupied even 10 percent of U.S. governor’s mansions. They fare better in Scandinavian countries where they hold 25 percent of the seats in the lower houses. Under communism, women held 20 to 55 percent of the seats in the lower houses. After communism half of those seats went to men. In Cuba, South Africa, and China women hold more than 20 percent of the seats. In Japan they hold 2.3 percent. In 1995, women held 6 percent of the cabinet posts around the world, except in Scandinavia and the Netherlands where women held more than 30 percent. Only 22 women have become heads of state in the 20th century.
Fisher says that women’s lack of participation in national governments cannot be explained by a country’s stage of development (female leaders are hard to come by in all societies, even traditional ones—in 82 out of 93 hunter/gatherer societies the leaders were men); nor can it be explained by voting behavior (statistics show that women win as often as men, when they run and in a 1996 Gallup Poll, many more women and men thought that things would improve if women held political office. In 1991, 90 percent of Americans said they would vote for a woman president, if she were qualified).
So how do we explain the lack of female leaders in government? Well, according to Fisher, women run for office to improve society, men to gain business connections or climb the political ladder, so women probably won’t achieve parity but will sway governments through civil organizations."
<snip>
"Now we come to the best part: “...a quirk of 20th century demography, the baby boom (World War II as a quirk?), in conjunction with the reality of feminine physiology, menopause, should accelerate this trend: the emergence of economically powerful women.” “Menopause,” says Fisher, “causes levels of estrogen to decline, unmasking women’s natural levels of testosterone—a hormone regularly associated with assertiveness and a drive for rank.”
Evidence for this can be found in traditional societies where after menopause women gained some power. In fact, older women are often viewed as being “like men.” So when women are perceived to be like men then we gain power? But I thought we were poised for power because of our innate skills as women–-different from men’s?
According to Fisher, by 2050 15 to 19 percent of the population will be over 65. Most of these will be women. We will become a voting block, and will favor social programs.
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