Hillary Clinton argued that one of the reasons she should have been president was because she was a woman. Today several women are vying for the opportunity to achieve what Hillary did not. They too assume that it is long past due that a woman lead our nation.
Those who want a woman to become our chief executive often contend that females are better suited to wielding power than men. They are said to be less bloodthirsty and more cooperative than males. If so, they are presumably better suited to providing peace and prosperity.
To be sure, we have had some excellent female leaders. Elizabeth I of England and Margret Thatcher come to mind. Then again we have also had some less than exemplary women exercising power. Some may disagree, but Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plainly have their drawbacks.
What cannot be disputed is that over the course of history men have been far more likely to hold the reins of power. In every nation, during every time period, this has been the case. The question is why is this so? It cannot be because men are always wiser than women.
The historian, Yuval Harari, in his book Species, notes that when something is this universal, there has to be a reason. Were this pattern deliberately adopted, somewhere, sometime, it would have been decided otherwise. And yet there has never been a matriarchal society.
Harari suggests several theories as to why this is the case and concludes that none of them provides a satisfactory explanation. One of them is that men are physically stronger than women and therefore are able to use force to gain and hold power. They become the bosses because they overpower rivals.
This hypothesis does not work because the leaders of large societies are seldom the most muscular. Franklin Roosevelt would never have become president if he had to beat up his competitors. After all, he was wheelchair bound and could not have managed it.
A closely related theory is that it is the most aggressive person who rises to the top and men are on average more aggressive than women. While it is true that men are, on average, more aggressive, leaders are seldom the most belligerent. They have to be under emotional control, which is a far cry from what we see—let us say—in the wrestling ring.
What then is taking place when it comes to social hierarchies? Harari confesses that he does not know. As it happens, I think I do. In my book, Human Hierarchies, I explain how these ranking systems develop and why men are more associated with them than women.
To begin with, we must realize that our ancestors were hunter-gatherers. Moreover, it was the men who hunted and the women who gathered. It could not have been otherwise in a world where women not only had the babies, but were responsible for breast feeding them. Babies could not be taken on the hunt.
Furthermore, for the hunt to succeed, the men had to cooperate on their tactics. For this to occur, they had to agree on a plan and often needed someone to coordinate their efforts. In short, they required a leader who was respected enough to be voluntarily followed.
As a result, men spent a great deal of time trying to determine who was the best leader. To do so, they competed to see which one had the best hunting, as well as the best interpersonal, skills. Once this person was settled upon, his right to give orders was broadly accepted.
In many ways it is the same today. Observe who has the highest status when boys choose up sides in a game of touch football and you will find that it is the best player. In fact, boys expend a great deal of effort trying to identify who this is. They also work extremely hard to improve their own rank.
This tendency is built into our genes. Males are more hierarchical in their attitudes than females because this proclivity was valuable in our environment evolutionary adaptedness. This is not to say that women do not enjoy winning—they do—but that fewer are as oriented in this direction as males.
What this boils down to is that fewer women independently seek power than men. Indeed, they are less comfortable with the competitive activities needed to rise to the top. There are exceptions, and we see more of them as women enter the workplace, but they are not the majority. And probably never will be.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Kennesaw State University
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