What would the world be like....

[CDN_Merlin]

if women were rulers? I mean, if the President had always been a women? If the Prime Minister was female?

Would we have had so many wars? etc. I'd like your opinions.

Thanks

[Foil]

That's an interesting question.

In order to go beyond simple speculation, I think we'd have to have a good sample of historical cases where women have been rulers. I honestly can't think of that many, beyond some tribal cultures where the women ruled, and maybe some of the woman monarchs in Europe. I'll ask my wife; she knows more about this than I do.

On the other hand, if I were to speculate, I don't think there'd be that much difference. Maybe in gender-specific national laws, but in wars and international power-politics, I think it would be roughly the same.

[CDN_Merlin]

But would we have gotten into those wars? Think about it for a sec. Women aren't as aggressive as men. They are more emotional. They are maternal. Would they not try to work things out more before resorting to violence?

[Ford Prefect]

I have read a couple of articles that speculate along these lines. The general opinion is that there would be more concentration on issues of social well being and less on international influence. In other words home issues would be higher on the list than pushing an international agenda.
There is no way to tell if that would be an overall good thing or not. Less time spent expanding a countries international influence might reduce the economic power of that nation but might also save resources for the citizens of the nation. Without the need for international pressure there might be less need for military expenditures again saving valuable resources for domestic issues. Fewer guns, more hospitals.
It is of course a generalization based on pure conjecture. The women that have been the leaders of major countries (Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Golda Mier come to mind) have not been significantly different in their attitudes and actions than their male counterparts but then they rose up through male dominated systems.
Should Hillary Clinton win the U.S. Presidency I doubt that you would see much if any change in overall tone of government either for the same reasons.
I'd be willing to give it a chance though. Make it illegal for any leader of any nation to be male. Give it a few decades and see what happens. I don't think it would be any worse than what we have now. If jerks like Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez and George W. Bush are the best examples of what men can do then bring on the women.

[dissent]

But would we have gotten into those wars? Think about it for a sec. Women aren't as aggressive as men. They are more emotional. They are maternal. Would they not try to work things out more before resorting to violence?

Interesting how we're putting on a layer of stereotypes in ordet to attempt to overcome a layer of stereotypes .....


Though, on average, we can make some very broad generalizations (no, I was NOT intending any sexist pun there!) based on gender, for both males and females, there are way too many other potential influences that can come into play on each individual's basis. Act threatening between a mother and her child - I'll show you aggressive. "more emotional" ???, just how does that get us necessarily to more objective standards of government? I don't have any specific objections to having the feminine gender in power, but I'm sure not going to vote for her solely because of her gender.

[Ferno]

Not as aggressive as men?

dude did you forget exactly what kind of lengths a woman goes to whenever she feels scorned? They more often than not wage their own little wars against those who they think slighted them.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

[Duper]

I don't think it would be much different. England and Spain were both ruled by queens on a couple of occations.

[Foil]

As I recall, Queen Elizabeth's reign in Britain was fairly marked by war(s).

[Kilarin]

Interesting how we're putting on a layer of stereotypes in ordet to attempt to overcome a layer of stereotypes ..

Yep, AND most people forget the bell curve.
There are certainly differences between the personality of the average woman and the average man. BUT, these are averages. You will find plenty of men who exhibit many of the so called "feminine" traits, as well as plenty of women who's mentality is closer to what we typically consider masculine.

Powerful positions of leadership have automatic filters that eliminate most people, male or female, from those roles. Either you won't LIKE it, or you won't be interested in it, or you won't be able to do it, or you won't be able to survive it, etc. For example, anyone who makes it into the office of U.S. president is most likely to have an aggressive personality. If they didn't, they never would have made it through the wolf-pack that was fighting for the same position.

So, if we had more female leaders, we shouldn't be surprised to see women leaders with personalities remarkably similar to the personalities of most of the male leaders we have had.

Look at Margret Thatcher for example. "Soft" is not a term that comes to mind. If she were soft, she never would have made it into that position. Hillary Clinton is another good example. When you look up aggressive in the dictionary, they show her picture.

Unless we change what it takes to get into public office, you won't see a big difference in the personalities of the people who get through that gauntlet. Whether they be male or female.

[roid]

it's hard to say.

Like Ford Prefect said, because women rulers are generally the acception to the rule, they generally come to power briefly in male dominated partiarchal society, and thus have had to tow the patriarchal line to even get to where they are. To get into their position of power in our society they would have to play the line, emulate masculine power, in our current state we would accept nothing else. So it really won't be that different, by now we're locked in our ways by patriarchal cultural history that we know few alternatives too.

I think a better question is what would a true non-patriarchal modern society be like - perhaps a matriachal society? Or perhaps it would even transcend that. Some form of Socialism?
What i'm asking is what would a woman leader be like, in a world that never had qualms about the notion.

Powerful positions of leadership have automatic filters that eliminate most people, male or female, from those roles. Either you won't LIKE it, or you won't be interested in it, or you won't be able to do it, or you won't be able to survive it, etc. For example, anyone who makes it into the office of U.S. president is most likely to have an aggressive personality. If they didn't, they never would have made it through the wolf-pack that was fighting for the same position.

So, if we had more female leaders, we shouldn't be surprised to see women leaders with personalities remarkably similar to the personalities of most of the male leaders we have had.

...

Unless we change what it takes to get into public office, you won't see a big difference in the personalities of the people who get through that gauntlet. Whether they be male or female.

It's questionable whether all of these sociological constructs are merely a consequence of long-term male domination & female subjugation. The Aggression, Wolf-Pack fighting.

As you say, to truly see the answer to this question - we need to change what it takes to get into public office. And to do that, public perception needs to change.

I mean - think about all of the language you have been acultured to associate with leaders. They are all labels of masculinity. This is an impossible task.
Even if every Social conservative, every Republican dropped dead tomorrow, that'd be just a drop in the bucket of the changes needed.
It's an impossible task.
So, you'll get the government you deserve.
It'll have a Testosterone label.

[CDN_Merlin]

Ok I can understand all the points made but what if men were never the dominate sex? What is women had been in control from day 1?

Would things be different?

[Testiculese]

Humans are vicious animals, doesn't matter what gender you are. The Alphas are all the same in any species.

Nothing would change.

[TIGERassault]

Not much would change on a global perspective. The reason females aren't so territorially agressive is because men don't want them to. For example, IIRC, in Irish history, women used to be as passionate about wars as men were, until one man put down a law saying that women couldn't fight in wars after seeing one woman get impaled in the chest by another woman.

[Kilarin]

Even if every Social conservative, every Republican dropped dead tomorrow, that'd be just a drop in the bucket of the changes needed

I think you are making a mistake here though if you are connecting conservatives with political aggressiveness. EVERY political agenda that manages to put people in office is aggressive. Including (and sometimes especially) Liberals. It's natural selection. If they aren't aggressive politicians, they don't get elected and you never hear about them.

[CUDA]

you've got to be kidding!!!!!!!!
ARE ANY OF YOU MARRIED OR HAVE DAUGHTERS?!?!?!?!?

every 28 days we'd be going to WAR!!!!!!

[Testiculese]

Maybe not war, CUDA, but \"intense negotiations\"

[Spidey]

LOL @Roid

I bet some poor conservative ran over your puppy when you were a little boy.

[Tunnelcat]

OK guys, women run on estrogen and progesterone, both have tranquilizing effects. Women also have interconnected brain halves, so they tend to use emotion more in decision making. That would be good for running a country, maybe.

Men on the other hand run on testosterone, which generates aggressive behavior. They also have brains that are usually not interconnected between the two halves, so they think more logically with less emotional undercurrents. However, testosterone is a very powerful hormone and will override logical thinking in most cases. Not always a good thing.

BUT, speaking from a female perspective, the monthly cycle can really screw up your body and mind, causing VERY unwanted confusing and aggressive behavior, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is how most women appear to men once a month. Hormones that swing around can cause unwanted and unpleasant side effects, I can tell you with confidence.

But the WORST time for most women is when menopause hits. Holy crap, you wouldn't want a women to run a country in that state of mind! Talking from my own experience, you can become very aggressive with the rise of testosterone and the fall off of estrogen. Most women have never really had to deal with testosterone and really don't know how to handle it. It's like trying to drive a hot car for the first time, you're going to break something. On top of that, you feel like s**t most of the time as the ovaries sputter out. You frequently get the urge to kill something a lot of the time! For at least five to ten years! Trust me, you wouldn't want most perimenopausal women as president. I'm talking WWIII here! Bwaaaahaaahaaa! Maybe AFTER the hormones settle down and we become nice little old ladies will it be a possibility.

[TechPro]

BUT, speaking from a female perspective, the monthly cycle can really screw up your body and mind, causing VERY unwanted confusing and aggressive behavior, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is how most women appear to men once a month. Hormones that swing around can cause unwanted and unpleasant side effects, I can tell you with confidence.

So ... would we then be potentially faced with going to war only once a month? But with an "older" female leader, would we then only go to war in flashes?

[roid]

Even if every Social conservative, every Republican dropped dead tomorrow, that'd be just a drop in the bucket of the changes needed

I think you are making a mistake here though if you are connecting conservatives with political aggressiveness. EVERY political agenda that manages to put people in office is aggressive. Including (and sometimes especially) Liberals. It's natural selection. If they aren't aggressive politicians, they don't get elected and you never hear about them.

Also - because we've been in a patriarchal society for some time, and conservatives by definition dislike change and protect the status quo.
Conservatives are politically aggressive, because most of them are dominated by a patriarchal religion.

EVERY political agenda that manages to put people in office is aggressive.

I'm not sure you can really objectively say that. By the standards of other nations, America is ultra right conservative. Your brand of war mongering leaders doesn't get elected in other countries - but you guys elect them. By the standards of other nations - your country chooses to elect idiots.
Your voters are dumber than a bag of hammers.

Or to put it a politically correct way - your leaders are just as conservative and aggressive as the voters who elect them. You get the government you deserve - a Mirror of your own society if you will.

LOL @Roid

I bet some poor conservative ran over your puppy when you were a little boy.

Basically yeah.
Social conservatives make policies that have nothing to do with them but directly effect other people's lives. They wage war on their moral enemies via policy - trying to force those around them to conform.

Generally the only people who aren't effected are the Social Conservatives themselves.

[Spidey]

Sigh…Get a history lesson.

[roid]

NO U

[Drakona]

Leadership requires a degree of aggression, proactiveness, assertiveness, and just outright trailblazing that women usually don't possess. While women as a whole don't meet those criteria well, there are outliers. The women who do occupy those positions usually do just as well as the men.

You can actually look at gaming as a microcosm of the same effect. There are hard core women gamers out there, but they're uncommon. (I'm not talking about RPGs or puzzle games, but about the relatively tough games like Descent or Starcraft that take years to learn). There are women with the technical inclination and aggressive personality necessary to master those games, but they're quite rare. In my experience, they're something like one in ten or one in fifty, depending on the game and your idea of \"elite\". On the other hand, among those that do exist, the hard core women gamers as a group aren't really that different than the hard core men as a group.

What would the world be like if the women, as a group, had been in charge? I don't think it would have happened that way. Men, as a whole, are better wired for competition in general and being in charge in particular. So in a fair competition for power, you'll get the occasional woman who rises to the top, but by and large men are going to run things. In order for most people in charge to be women, we would need some artificial means of keeping men out of power--perhaps a strong matriarchal tradition. And that would be very different, in ways not related to the differences between women and men.

To stretch the hypothetical question, though, if all the people who happened to rise to power--through sheer astronomical improbability--were all women, I don't think the world would be much different. My experience with women in power as managers or elsewhere, like my experience with women who are elite gamers or elite engineers, is that they aren't really different from men. Their own styles of leadership differ from each other more than the women as a group differ from the men as a group. Elite Descent pilots differ mainly by their own style; the women aren't particuarly less aggressive. Leaders are the same way; once you get to be elite enough, you have your own style, and the women aren't particularly less likely to declare war than the men.

They certainly don't particularly suffer from emotional or hormonal issues, any more than the men suffer from aggression or sexual issues. When you're in a position of great responsibility, you tend to develop the self-discipline to rein that stuff in REALLY fast. Or you self-destruct really fast. Either way, leaders are the sort of people who do what they have to to make things succeed; women or men who can't overcome their baser instincts to accomplish that don't make the cut in the first place.

[roid]

Leadership requires a degree of aggression, proactiveness, assertiveness, and just outright trailblazing that women usually don't possess. While women as a whole don't meet those criteria well, there are outliers. The women who do occupy those positions usually do just as well as the men.

You can actually look at gaming as a microcosm of the same effect. There are hard core women gamers out there, but they're uncommon. (I'm not talking about RPGs or puzzle games, but about the relatively tough games like Descent or Starcraft that take years to learn). There are women with the technical inclination and aggressive personality necessary to master those games, but they're quite rare. In my experience, they're something like one in ten or one in fifty, depending on the game and your idea of "elite". On the other hand, among those that do exist, the hard core women gamers as a group aren't really that different than the hard core men as a group.

What would the world be like if the women, as a group, had been in charge? I don't think it would have happened that way. Men, as a whole, are better wired for competition in general and being in charge in particular. So in a fair competition for power, you'll get the occasional woman who rises to the top, but by and large men are going to run things. In order for most people in charge to be women, we would need some artificial means of keeping men out of power--perhaps a strong matriarchal tradition. And that would be very different, in ways not related to the differences between women and men.

Or you could redefine what "power" is in society. To something that appeals more to women, rather than to men. ie: in much the same way that current power stuctures appeal to something untenable in the male psyche, and perhaps unappealing to women. Could you imagine it being the opposite? A power structure that appealed to something untenable in the female psyche, and was unappealing to men.

(Although, the women's movement has been encouraging women to play with concepts power and aggression, that have typically been seen as male attributes. In much the same way i think if the power structures in our society were structured to appeal primarily to women - then there would have been a MEN'S movement to play with these otherwise feminine concepts of power. And as a result - it would be in men's interest to act more feminine - if that's where the power is.
I dunno if that's very accessable to people - a kinda alternate history thing that maybe not everyone can visualise.

A part of why Women's lib was so important is that women were culturally kept outof the power structures and desision making circles of society. Thus their issues were always sideissues, and never passionately championed by INSIDERS of the desision making circles. The quickest and easiest way for women to break into this circle was to emulate current cultural norms for leaders - basically emulate MEN leaders - Play their game.)

To stretch the hypothetical question, though, if all the people who happened to rise to power--through sheer astronomical improbability--were all women, I don't think the world would be much different. My experience with women in power as managers or elsewhere, like my experience with women who are elite gamers or elite engineers, is that they aren't really different from men. Their own styles of leadership differ from each other more than the women as a group differ from the men as a group. Elite Descent pilots differ mainly by their own style; the women aren't particuarly less aggressive. Leaders are the same way; once you get to be elite enough, you have your own style, and the women aren't particularly less likely to declare war than the men.

They certainly don't particularly suffer from emotional or hormonal issues, any more than the men suffer from aggression or sexual issues. When you're in a position of great responsibility, you tend to develop the self-discipline to rein that stuff in REALLY fast. Or you self-destruct really fast. Either way, leaders are the sort of people who do what they have to to make things succeed; women or men who can't overcome their baser instincts to accomplish that don't make the cut in the first place.

Not entirely so. Think about it - there are ways that male aggression and sexual play (?, perhaps domination?) is injected into the culture of power. Patriachal sub-systmes in the culture like The Old Boys Club are testimount to that: It's a way of making being in power easier - by interconnecting with other powerful people, and sharing their collective shared POV - much of which doesn't even need to be discussed. They arn't just power clubs - they are MEN'S clubs (and i'm not saying that's bad. We need men's clubs!). It's one reason that Men and Women are more comfortable around their own sex - because there are unspoken things that you just know everyone else "gets". Deeply ingrained goals and wants shared by the gender. Theres a lot of *Wink wink*, *Nod*, and knowing smiles amongst men. As comparison - women in groups tend to chatter about such things much easier, perhaps because they are less concerned about showing their deep psychological needs (whereas in men this can be seen as a weakness for competitors to exploit, they are generally less comfortable discussing such things).

What i'm getting at is that men's emotional issues ARE played out - regularly - in power structures. We're just so used to seeing them, and so used to our patriachal system that women are only just breaking into (so it's still initially via male emulation as i mentioned earlier) that we label such things as just part of power itself. We forget to question whether it's actually a gender specific psychological issue - because we're not used to there being any other gender alternative to honestly compare to.

[TIGERassault]

Fun fact: the last male President in Ireland died less than three weeks ago, of old age. Only female presidents have been elected in the last 18 years or so here.
I'll let you lot make what you want of that.

[Foil]

I tend to agree with what Kilarin and Drakona have said: Those qualities (aggression, etc.) associated with male tendencies are generally going to be found in anyone who successfully ascends to a position of power. [Of course, there are some exceptions, usually in places where power is inherited rather than earned.]

I do agree with roid, though, in that leaders aren't necessarily the type to have \"reined themselves in\" from their tendencies. As he said, power structures are still very marked by common male issues; I would venture to say that being in a position of power probably amplifies those issues to some extent. Even just in the last few years, we've seen some of the highest-powered men in the U.S. exposed for common male issues (sex, thirst for power, etc.).

[Testiculese]

Yea, but who's Ireland going to invade, and why would they bother?

[Ford Prefect]

A minor fault in this discussion is that we are assuming that power structures would remain exactly as they are now in a matriarchal society. It is possible that the system itself would change to adapt to a different style of government thus creating a different style of leader.
It would probably take a century or so of removing the vote from males for any significant adaptation to take place but women had no vote for centuries so turn about would be fair play. I say let's give it a try.

[Spidey]

I doubt anything would change all that much.

[TIGERassault]

Yea, but who's Ireland going to invade, and why would they bother?

Northern Ireland. Because that's still a separate country.

[Testiculese]

There's really a N. and S. Ireland? Wierd... That would be more of a civil war thing than anything else, I would think. Unification of what is basically the same culture/religion/people/etc and all that?

[TIGERassault]

There's really a N. and S. Ireland? Wierd... That would be more of a civil war thing than anything else, I would think. Unification of what is basically the same culture/religion/people/etc and all that?

It's Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland (aka: EverywhereElse Ireland), in a ratio of 3:13. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, while Republic of Ireland isn't. And they're separate countries.
Actually, I'm sorta surprised you didn't know that already, really. I imagined that, even as far away as America, the countries that make up the UK would be common knowledge.

Anyway, neither governments would be inclined to attack each other, but there were plenty of civil wars though! It was only recently that the fights started to calm down, and in just the last 2-4 years the IRA, the main Repbulican force, gave up their weapons.

[Tunnelcat]

So ... would we then be potentially faced with going to war only once a month? But with an "older" female leader, would we then only go to war in flashes?

Lets see. Between the ages of 12 and 40, women might be more likely to go to war once a month.

Between the ages 40 or so and 60 or so, the onset of perimenopause varies, WWIII anytime, anywhere. Highly unpredictable. Hormone swings affect women differently.

After about age sixty, mostly mellow except for a few women who happen to be stuck with higher than normal testosterone levels after menopause. Possibly more aggressive. Hillary Clinton maybe falls into this catagory?

All you women out there don't flame me, I've been going through this perimenopause B.S. for 6 years, so I've experienced it first hand!