Why women should rule the world

[SapphosRock]

Interesting article showing the positive response from female leaders to the Coronavirus pandemic. They are literally saving lives while the men (particularly Trump) are in denial and floundering:

[[https://www.forbes.com/sites/avivahwittenbergcox/2020/04/13/what-do-countries-with-the-best-coronavirus-reponses-have-in-common-women-leaders/
www.forbes.com/sites/avivahwittenbergcox/2020/04/13/what-do-countries-with-the-best-coronavirus-reponses-have-in-common-women-leaders/]]

I also wonder how Hilary Clinton would have coped with the pandemic if she'd been president. Obviously it can't be proven either way but I think she would have taken it extremely seriously from the beginning and there wouldn't be the loss of life in America that we're seeing now.

Well, can't comment on Clinton, because we really don't know, but it's certainly fascinating reading about the current responses. Nice to see you Sapphos. Hope you're well.

There are indeed some very capable and intelligent women in every aspect of life ( politics included ).
Thank fully they don't posses your level of analytical and logical skills .

Definitely we need more female leaders but it was such a shame that Hilary was the first major option in America. Who knows, they’d maybe have acted sooner under her but I think she’d make a very underhand leader and there would be concerns about her too.

Catherine Bennett's Observer article raised similar questions:

'Memo to the UK: women's voices can also be useful in this crisis'
The key decisions about lockdown and containment are all being made by men'

concluded:
Just as literature on risk can’t prove that, run by women, the banks would not have collapsed, we can’t be sure a significant female presence would have altered attitudes when the Johnson friendship group was choosing not to focus on supplies of protective gear and ventilators, not to maintain testing, not to scrutinise arrivals from abroad, not to stop handshaking and not to prohibit massive gatherings such as the England-Wales rugby at Twickenham and the Cheltenham races, despite the World Health Organization’s advice and the evidence from Italy.

But if it’s mistaken to imagine that gender diversity might have influenced pre-lockdown attitudes to risk, when tens of thousands of solitary deaths were reportedly assessed as a fair exchange for the survivors’ prosperity, something has to explain why the UK approach was, if not the full gung-ho, so far from inspiring trust. Compare it, for instance, to decisions made in New Zealand, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Germany – where policymaking seems to have been guided, above all, by caution.

Respect, in any event, to Jacinda Ardern, Erna Solberg, Mette Frederiksen, Katrín Jakobsdóttir and Angela Merkel."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/11/memo-to-the-uk-womens-voices-can-also-be-useful-in-this-crisis

I'm v impressed by the communication style of NZ's Jacinda Ardern. She listens to experts, expresses empathy, provides clear instructions. It's true that NZ has geographical advantages when it comes to containing the virus, but even considering this her leadership has kept casualties to a minimum and no doubt made Kiwis feel reassured.

Not a country leader, but the female major of San Francisco, London Breed, showed good judgement in locking down early, and now SF is showing fewer casualties than other American cities of comparable size and density.

Of course there are some men who have shown good leadership in the crisis, such as South Korea's Moon Jae-in.

I think the world would be completely different if women ruled the world. Not perfect but I do think better.

I saw a similar graphic to that but it had Belgium's prime minister on, too.
Maybe she was revoved because Belgium is not actually doing that well.
I wonder what these leaders are doing differently?
Jacinta Arden locked down very quickly, when NZ had only one death, but most of the others didn't.
I would like to know what exactly they are doing better.

Taiwan started precautionary measures as soon as they heard about the outbreak in Wuhan. Of course, they had the "advantage" of previous experience with SARS and a justified distrust of Chinese authorities. So far they've had six deaths despite being close to ground zero for the pandemic.

R0wantrees thanks for sharing the Guardian article. Fascinating that so many poor decisions were made by male leaders and smart decisions by female leaders. It doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

I truly think the world would be in a much better place right now if the CV decisions had been left to women.

FloralBunting nice to see you too, hope you're keeping well.

I think that generally women don’t take on the rhetoric of war and bluff and bluster and lie so blatantly, they will know what the wider implications are for women and children and will not be reminiscing about wartime spirit and so on. Men going on about the Dunkirkspirit do not also say that it was an absolute disaster,,

I think this is, given the small population (~1 primary leader per country) more a reflection of the voters than their leaders specifically being women. In some countries, there is still sexist resistance to having a female leader but I think larger factors are also at work. Well before universal suffrage, European nations with a Queen at the head were more likely to go to war than those with a King and, more contemporaneously, let's not forget Mrs Thatcher. I don't believe either reflects (for ill or other) on women as a whole, we're dealing with the tiniest slice of the population.

Which woman would you like to be PM?

Patel, McVey, Wrong-Daily or Swinson?

Is there anybody who believes we'd be any better off if Theresa May was sill PM?

Is there anybody who believes we'd be any better off if Theresa May was sill PM?

I am no fan of Theresa May but I doubt she would have boasted about shaking hands with CV patients in hospital or said she hoped to see her mother on Mother's Day after telling the nation not to visit family. I think she would have been less hesitant than BJ to cancel mass sporting events and probably would have looked at what was happening in Italy and Spain and taken swift action rather than going into denial 'this couldn't happen in the UK' mode. So yes, actually I do think we'd be marginally better off with her as PM.

I tend to think Gronky might be right, there is a correlation of some kind going on. I suspect that in many countries a woman is more likely to be leader of a certain type of party, for example.

I would say that in my personal experience women as a group can be better at accepting expertise than men, they seem less likely to see it as reflecting on them in some negative way - that's a significant generalisation mind you.

I suspect Clinton would have been much better at taking action than the Trump administration, much more competent. I don't however think of her as being someone who isn't prone to politicising issues or trying to use problems to her own political advantage.

Every Gronky post is some variation on, "Women are just as bad as men, actually women are worse than men, and actually no one can analyze anything anyway."

That's not much different than the OP post, which is pretty much "women are better than men."

The difference is that women are measurably better than men by any social, political, medical, sexual, environmental, military or familial standard. Like Shakira's hips, the data don't lie.

See also: the millions of men of planet Earth who have greedily stolen the resources available to all of us and placed themselves as lords over everyone while making laws and resource distribution systems that preserve men's stolen power and severely punish anyone who dares criticize much less try to alter these entwined patriarchal systems choking the life out of us and the planet.

I would love to see more female leaders, and I think a lot of the ones in the article are doing a great job.
But, the article, like many who do this, cherry pick to illustrate their point.
The following countries have male leaders (one of them even a "strongman" leader), and are seeing good control:
China, Japan, Israel, Turkey, Canada.
Plus the aforementioned Belgium (female leader) not doing so well.

I suspect Clinton would have been much better at taking action than the Trump administration, much more competent.

I would agree that she had a track record of listening to experts but she did also display a tendency to make 'safe' choices politically (a more positive way of describing this would be that she rarely acted rashly). My feeling is that she would have been slower than Trump initially (not that the haste he acted in was useful) but have accelerated faster as the scale of the threat became clear, without any ego to get in the way. However, I'm not terribly certain because, in my opinion, her political career could better be described as acting as a networker rather than as a leader (in some respects, like Carter though there are many divergences between them), albeit to great effect. This may have contributed to her downfall, a lot of Americans prefer a bold decision, irrespective of how correct it is.

Every Gronky post is some variation on, "Women are just as bad as men, actually women are worse than men, and actually no one can analyze anything anyway."

blame my late tutor, his reasoning technique could be best described as 'turn the house of cards upside-down and see what falls where'. It's not the best way to make friends but it's a great way to see if an idea holds up.

The difference is that women are measurably better than men by any social, political, medical, sexual, environmental, military or familial standard.

[sceptical] 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?

Apologies, that [sceptical] was supposed to be a

Trump is pretty much personification of this "strong" man.
Not only does he not listen to advisors, he's surrounded himself with terrified yes men, and he truly believes he is a great genius anyway.
He "has a feeling" that the virus will "miraculously disappear", he even said he has no evidence, just a feeling.
And Dr Fauci, who actually seems competent, seems like he's walking a tightrope every time he opens his mouth that he doesn't say something that, while true, contradicts Trump and gets him the sack,