Why women should rule the world

It’s all well and good in the short term but what happens long term? What happens to all the people immediately affected by more extreme measures? While I agree that some female leaders have so far done really well I think it’s too soon to pass judgement on which leaders have made the best decisions. This will only be clear in a few years time when we begin to realise the full impact of the pandemic.

I've only skim read the thread so forgive me if this point is redundant or has already been made. But the idea that the world would have been better if it was run by women from the start seems to ignore the circumstances that go into making women better leaders in the first place. All of the arguments about women being less egotistical, more collaborative, less driven by the desire to hoard power and wealth, better at communicating, more empathetic etc are valid in my opinion, but surely these qualities have developed as part of the female socialisation demanded of us under patriarchy. Unless there is some reason to believe that these traits have a biological basis, then if we had always lived in a female dominated society or even in a truly equal one, it seems likely to me that women would not be socialised to have these traits over men. If the qualities that make men poor leaders and which make women better leaders are down to socialisation under patriarchy, then it seems reasonable to me that they only manifest themselves because of patriarchy. Does that make sense? I think if at this point in history women took over all or most positions of power then we'd see a significant improvement to many aspects of life, but I'm not sure we can extrapolate backwards from that as to what a world run by women from the beginning would have looked like.

Points out, amnong many points, that the only Nordic country without a female leader has ballsed it up.

Has Sweden ballsed it up though?

Congratulations SapphosRock!

which apparently came as a bit of a shock to their opponents

Despite them being not that effective initially (in terms of not being as much of a game changer as later designs and compared to other siege engines), I can hardly imagine the terror from the appearance alone, it must have seemed like apocalyptic devilry.

Contratulations, SapphosRock

Thank you, aliasundercover.

TheProdigalKittensReturn it's long, but well worth the read. Took me a few days to get through it in small chunks.

sapphos

Congratulations 🎉💐

Congratulations SapphosRock - is it a good thing or a bad thing that you are not getting a constant stream of people coming to admire your baby? I can't decide.

@Gronky - I'm enjoying reading your arguments.

This allowed smaller upstarts to wage the wars you're currently reading about

Just got as far as them using the first cannons in battle...which apparently came as a bit of a shock to their opponents

Funny old time to bring a child into the world.

Yikes, but also congratulations! Hope you and baby are both well.

And they are constantly starting barnies...the queens must really have been going some to outdo them!

An interesting aspect to this is the role of technology. It pushes and pulls and reshapes the paradigm of what war is. At the time of the Plantagenets, gunpowder weapons were so primitive that they were yet to make the big impact on siege warfare; meaning a good castle still offered the option of passive defence, reducing the size of an army necessary to lay claim to an area of land. This allowed smaller upstarts to wage the wars you're currently reading about.

RomeoLikedCapuletGirls what you've said is why I'm sceptical about a world initally unchanged, save for women at the top of government being vastly different from our own on a geopolitical level. Even if the traits that give rise to hierarchical leadership are found more often in men than in women, it only requires a few hierarchical women to move society in that direction and they will be the ones seeking power.

FloralBunting, sorry for the confusion, badgers is a stand in for more vulgar words, rather than a literal Meles meles.

Good article:

edition.cnn.com/2020/04/14/asia/women-government-leaders-coronavirus-hnk-intl/index.html

Points out, amnong many points, that the only Nordic country without a female leader has ballsed it up.

That's an interesting link, NonnyMouse, saving that one!

How are you doing, btw, Sapphos? I feel like I haven't seen you around since before Covid madness hit.

The idea that humans lived in idyllic egalitarian groups before a terrible hierarchy was ushered in is a very simplistic narrative. And it is a relatively recent invention.

The reality is more interesting and challenges the linear stories we tell ourselves.

newhumanist.org.uk/articles/5409/are-we-city-dwellers-or-hunter-gatherers

So much respect for Jacinda Ardern. My type of Prime Minister. Just taken a 20% pay cut for 6 months and most of New Zealand ministers have done the same, to show solidarity to citizens. Acknowledging that this won't make any difference to the financial impact of Covid 19, but for me, she gets the 'tone' right every time.

I've read the thread through twice, and I have a burning question, because I've definitely missed something.

Why are badgers relevant and what are we defining as patriarchal about them?

Which is why PHMT. if it’s hierarchical (which it definitely was in the past) the vast majority of men are going to lose out. And they still do, being the primary victims of violence.

Doesn’t that raise the question of how the patriarchal badgers were able to grab power in the first place and hold onto it for so long?
Isn’t that obvious? If you have a patriarchal (aka. hierarchical) society up against an egalitarian one, the hierarchical one is going to win because it is trying to win. The egalitarian one isn’t trying to win, so loses.

The prime minister / president / chancellor doesn’t make all the decision though. For all countries, it’s the government working together to solve the problem, so a combination of both genders. Therefore, this thread is pointless.

Yes, it's always a group. I think this is really why the US has performed so poorly, it's not just that Trump is inadequate, it's that he has created a situation where the whole government has become ineffective and unable to work well. And the Americans were already a bit like that.

It is fascinating

Im reading about the plantagenets at the moment

And they are constantly starting barnies...the queens must really have been going some to outdo them!

Not necessarily because they were more war like

I agree and find it fascinating to think that even those with a supposedly divine right were constrained by a myriad of invisible strings. I think that even that level of immediate complexity wasn't the entirety of what restrained their decisions and conflict could just as readily be the result of unwitting decisions made by the long deceased.

European nations with a Queen at the head were more likely to go to war than those with a King

Not necessarily because they were more war like

It has been argued that it may be partly down to the division of labour between kings and queens and the married status of the queen

Which woman would you like to be PM?

Patel, McVey, Wrong-Daily or Swinson?

Dare I suggest Sturgeon 😂

No, I won't. But I've been generally impressed with the way she has handed this crisis in Scotland (and I'm no SNP fan).

Her briefings compared to those in Westminster are night and day.