Can women be great leaders? Has there ever been one?

[Winston]

Can women become great leaders? Or even good leaders? Has there ever been a great female leader in history? Or even today?

What about Presidents or Prime Ministers? Did Margaret Thatcher make a good British Prime Minister? What about the female Prime Ministers of Holland?

[publicduende]

I'm sure I'll be stirring a hornets nest now. Yes, they can be just as intelligent, capable, visionary and charismatic leaders as men. Thatcher is one good example but so is Veronica Bachelet in Chile, Angela Merkel in Germany, Golda Meir in Israel, Indira Gandhi in India, Benazhir Bhutto in Pakistan, and countless more. Now, someone might come up saying they're just puppets to the P2B. Fine, just like men are. I don't remember any female Prime Minister in Holland. I think Denmark has one though.

[abcdavid01]

Generally I am distrustful of women in politics because of their instincts. They typically make decisions based on emotion instead of logic. They have a maternal instinct towards security, which comes at the expense of freedom. Studies have shown that the 19th Amendment lead to the growth of the welfare state. Women voting creates the kind of anti-male divorce laws we have in America. I believe very firmly in non-arbitrary government, no matter what form it takes. It just so happens that women are more likely to vote against it. Nevertheless, there are exceptions. Thatcher was good and she believed in F.A. Hayek. She believed in precise laws instead of government doing whatever it wants based on whims or the will of the majority.

[publicduende]

Generally I am distrustful of women in politics because of their instincts. They typically make decisions based on emotion instead of logic. They have a maternal instinct towards security, which comes at the expense of freedom. Studies have shown that the 19th Amendment lead to the growth of the welfare state. Women voting creates the kind of anti-male divorce laws we have in America. I believe very firmly in non-arbitrary government, no matter what form it takes. It just so happens that women are more likely to vote against it. Nevertheless, there are exceptions. Thatcher was good and she believed in F.A. Hayek. She believed in precise laws instead of government doing whatever it wants based on whims or the will of the majority.

Might be true, yet not all women have the same emotional profile, so to speak. Merkel is steering the world's third economy with a rationality and resolve that would put 90% of male leaders to shame. You should probably consider that not all women are complete slaves of their menstrual cycle, especially those who are top notch intellects to start with, and have one or two decades of experience in their field (management, politics, etc.).

Your point of women voting pro anti-male divorce laws is quite unfair. Are you assuming that women shoudn't vote on the basis they tend to favour their interest against those of males? Well, first that is true for men, too, and overwhelmingly so. Secondly...this is democracy, baby. If you give n million female voters the right to have their say, you have to expect that their voice will have to count. Then again, in most modern "democracies" no single large category or people ever has a voice. But that's another story...

[abcdavid01]

I agree about Merkel, but as I said with Thatcher, I think they are exceptions. The issue with divorce laws isn't about women looking for their best interests. I don't think men should look to the law for their best interests either. I don't agree with hate crime laws for example. The law should be blind and fair to all groups. That's why I like China's law where in a divorce the house goes to the spouse who paid for it. It's not biased towards either gender. I don't like Democracy. Here in America we were never supposed to be a Democracy. Hayek himself, who Thatcher and Reagan got economic ideas from, he argued that it is better to live under a Monarch who grants freedoms than a Democracy that is very repressive. If we had a full Democracy in America and put our Bill of Rights up for a vote we would have lost free speech the first time someone was offended.

"If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president. It's kind of a pipe dream, it's a personal fantasy of mine, but I don't think it's going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women." - Ann Coulter

"Were our State a pure democracy, . . . there would yet be excluded from their deliberations, 1. Infants, until arrived at years of discretion. 2. Women, who, to prevent deprivation of morals and ambiguity of issue, could not mix promiscuously in the public meetings of men. 3. Slaves, from whom the unfortunate state of things with us takes away the rights of will and of property." - Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson even thought that the condition of slaves was unfortunate and ought to be rectified. He did not feel the same for women.

Women tend towards liberalism. Liberals don't care about the law as it is written. They believe in the spirit of the law and interpretive text. Following liberalism, laws are just put in place to make the populace feel they are protected, but a judge or anyone else in government can interpret the law however they want and have basically unlimited powers. This is fascism.

If a female leader like Thatcher or Merkel rules based on logic and rationalism and the rule of law, great. But they are atypical of all women.

[ChosenTraveler]

No, women don't make good leaders for they are far too emotionally unstable, and leadership is a man's responsibility. Women's duties are simple: to care for the home, nurture the children and care for the man. Men are meant to be leaders, for it's our instinct.

Women are meant to follow. This is why a woman can never have a greater career than a man, because a man is supposed to become something that his woman can look up to.

[terminator]

No, women make way too many harsh laws against workers - e.g. tax you to death and pretend they care about you! E.g. Thatcher's Poll tax.

[abcdavid01]

A woman can have a greater career than a "male" but only if that male is not truly a man. It is not the natural order of things.

[publicduende]

I agree about Merkel, but as I said with Thatcher, I think they are exceptions. The issue with divorce laws isn't about women looking for their best interests. I don't think men should look to the law for their best interests either. I don't agree with hate crime laws for example. The law should be blind and fair to all groups. That's why I like China's law where in a divorce the house goes to the spouse who paid for it. It's not biased towards either gender. I don't like Democracy. Here in America we were never supposed to be a Democracy. Hayek himself, who Thatcher and Reagan got economic ideas from, he argued that it is better to live under a Monarch who grants freedoms than a Democracy that is very repressive. If we had a full Democracy in America and put our Bill of Rights up for a vote we would have lost free speech the first time someone was offended.

Well, laws would always be fair and impartial if they somehow rained down from God. As we all know they are created by politicians, policymakers, economists...human beings. Very often a bill can be almost single-handedly designed and pushed to approval only by a small number of proponents, who might be men or might be women. The partiality of a law is inherent in the way the proponents design the bill and possibly in the way it changes during its discussion and approval process. A few women might well be behind some particularly nasty pieces of legislation, yet if you look at the proportion of men vs women in the US (UK, EU etc.) parliament, the chance of a law being devised by a man is always much higher.

Agreed on the idea of enlightened monarchies vs. repressive democracies. Yet, once again, where's the evidence that women are behind the worse laws?

"If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president. It's kind of a pipe dream, it's a personal fantasy of mine, but I don't think it's going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women." - Ann Coulter

"Were our State a pure democracy, . . . there would yet be excluded from their deliberations, 1. Infants, until arrived at years of discretion. 2. Women, who, to prevent deprivation of morals and ambiguity of issue, could not mix promiscuously in the public meetings of men. 3. Slaves, from whom the unfortunate state of things with us takes away the rights of will and of property." - Thomas Jefferson

A bunch of quotes taken away from their context doesn't make them particularly authoritative. I suppose Ann Coulter is this hardcore Republican pasionaria who would probably allow family pets to vote if she knew they would vote the way of the elephant. Not a great source of impartiality

Jefferson even thought that the condition of slaves was unfortunate and ought to be rectified. He did not feel the same for women.

Goes a long way to describe the condition of women at Jefferson's time. Society has come quite some way since then, I assume.

Women tend towards liberalism. Liberals don't care about the law as it is written. They believe in the spirit of the law and interpretive text. Following liberalism, laws are just put in place to make the populace feel they are protected, but a judge or anyone else in government can interpret the law however they want and have basically unlimited powers. This is fascism.

If a female leader like Thatcher or Merkel rules based on logic and rationalism and the rule of law, great. But they are atypical of all women.

This is BS. There's no evidence that women tend towards liberalism, or any political current on a preferential basis. Like men, women vote according to their personal opinions and beliefs, which will have been moulded by anything from their family background to what their husbands vote, social status, financial interest. The whole lot. Thatcher and Merkel may well be atypical women. Yet, without those qualities, they would have never been good politicians in the first place. So, I would say they made effective policy not because they were women, but because they were driven by logic and rationalism, as you say. Same goes for men, after all.

[ChosenTraveler]

A woman can have a greater career than a "male" but only if that male is not truly a man. It is not the natural order of things.

Though on this plain it's not the natural order of things,when it comes to the nature of the genders, men have to be greater. Men are solution based, women are attention based, and the defects of the latter makes it hard for them. Look no further than America, as an example of the consequences of pushes for "equality" and allowing women to have "careers".


In a relationship, a man must aspire to have a greater career and/or achieve more in his life than his woman, for if his woman achieves more, it offsets the "balance" of the relationship and the woman loses respect for him.

[publicduende]

A woman can have a greater career than a "male" but only if that male is not truly a man. It is not the natural order of things.

I am curious to understand where you're finding ground for such statements. So a man who's a respected yet humble teacher will be automatically emasculated by having a high-flying career woman as a wife? There are many order of things, my young friend. In the order of absolute male pride, still common in quite a few traditional societies, the man must feel empowered, head and shoulder over the woman in the professional camp as well as many others. In the order of financial and material success, where culture is not considered as important as how big your house, how fat your bank account is, damned be the man (or woman) who pursues a career driven by intellectual or artistic self-development.

Finally, let's not forget the order of a loving couple, where the individual and what one feels for the other counts more than anything else. In this context, there can't be a better man than one who loves his family and his family more than he loves himself and his pride. And if that means staying at home with the children while lawyer wifey is providing for most of the family financial needs. So long the couple is in harmony about such choices, why should we judge them based on a scale that's different from theirs?

[publicduende]

In a relationship, a man must aspire to have a greater career and/or achieve more in his life than his woman, for if his woman achieves more, it offsets the "balance" of the relationship and the woman loses respect for him.

If the man loses his woman's respect over something like that, it means the relationship was ill-balanced to start with, and perhaps ought never to have happened.

[abcdavid01]

Okay, but if we're taking the stance that all laws are biased because they are crafted by humans then you might as well say China's divorce law is biased too because it's partial to the homeowners instead of their spouses, regardless of gender. That sort of bias doesn't matter. Women haven't changed all that much since Jefferson's time. That's the whole point of this site. The thing that has changed is that Feminism has them trying to play male roles. Most of the time they just wind up as poor caricatures. In the case of Thatcher and Merkel and women in positions of power, political or otherwise, even if they do a great job it's a damn shame that they had to step up because the males weren't acting like men. It's a little hard to examine these things because the definition of "liberal" in America is different from around the world and even our own history before the 20th Century. There's a study by John Lott analyzing the effect of grant women voting rights in America; it concluded that it lead to increased government growth both at the state and federal level irrespective of other factors. Of course other factors play a role in all human decision making. The important thing is to try to isolate variables. Single women are more likely to be liberal than married ones for example. But overall I believe women tend towards liberalism and studies like Lott's support this. I make rhetorical arguments with my own explanations as to why this is (women value security over freedom, etc.).

[ChosenTraveler]

In a relationship, a man must aspire to have a greater career and/or achieve more in his life than his woman, for if his woman achieves more, it offsets the "balance" of the relationship and the woman loses respect for him.

If the man loses his woman's respect over something like that, it means the relationship was ill-balanced to start with, and perhaps ought never to have happened.

Not necessarily. All women, no matter the background, creed or ethnicity are inherently attracted to powerful, dominant men. This is the fallacy that many men, especially western men have, when dealing with females. They don't understand how to counteract the female psyche/female behavior because they've been conditioned to believe that a women ought to be "treated like a princess" and "she'll care for me if I don't have a dime".

We criticize women for having "entitlement complexes" but we never examine how the men of the world before us dealt with their women. They dealt with them harshly and treated them like children, and men of this era need to emulate their tactics.

[abcdavid01]

A woman can have a greater career than a "male" but only if that male is not truly a man. It is not the natural order of things.

I am curious to understand where you're finding ground for such statements. So a man who's a respected yet humble teacher will be automatically emasculated by having a high-flying career woman as a wife? There are many order of things, my young friend. In the order of absolute male pride, still common in quite a few traditional societies, the man must feel empowered, head and shoulder over the woman in the professional camp as well as many others. In the order of financial and material success, where culture is not considered as important as how big your house, how fat your bank account is, damned be the man (or woman) who pursues a career driven by intellectual or artistic self-development.

Finally, let's not forget the order of a loving couple, where the individual and what one feels for the other counts more than anything else. In this context, there can't be a better man than one who loves his family and his family more than he loves himself and his pride. And if that means staying at home with the children while lawyer wifey is providing for most of the family financial needs. So long the couple is in harmony about such choices, why should we judge them based on a scale that's different from theirs?

In full disclosure, the ground I have for such statements is my own personal experience. My father was a hard working lawyer who always ate dinner with my sister and I and took great care in raising us. My mother worked at home as a high ranking executive for a telephone company. She would go out shopping during the day, then work until late at night on conference calls and avoiding family while still being physically right there. My father told me not to marry someone like her. There are always exceptions. For example, let's say there's a Black or Hispanic child in a foster home. Would it be better if they were adopted by a white couple or a couple of their own ethnicity? The answer is the family that will be able to take care of them best, even if it is a white family. That doesn't mean race isn't important because these kids are already vulnerable to identity issues from losing biological parents. The real best answer is a family of their own race/ethnicity who will be able to take care of them well. I know about identity issues as well being mixed race.