Women Leaders Face Sufficient Problems Without Being Superheroes

Being a contrary minded sort of person I often find myself challenging received wisdom of which there is a good deal these days in every breakfast newspaper. This week, my eye (and with it my questioning antennae), was caught by an article by Mary Ann Sieghart writing in the London Times. She is a great champion of women's causes and I have much sympathy with her viewpoints. In her column this week she invited her readers to engage in a flight of fancy - not a total fancy for there is a chance that it may happen - namely a G8 Summit in which three of the world leaders were women.

Angela Merkel has already become the first female Chancellor of Germany; Mary Ann Siegart now asked her readers to consider what might happen if Hillary Clinton secured the democratic nomination in the United States and later won the Presidency; while in France Ségolène Royal were to become Head of State after the elections there this spring. What a message this would send to women throughout the world.

Well, yes, but. Here the questioning antennae swing into action. Why would it be such a good thing? Yes, it would demonstrate that women can reach the highest echelons of power - but then this is already known. Women have been leading nations since time began. True, not in great numbers, but certainly in our modern age a girl growing up can aspire to lead her nation without difficulty. She might have to work hard but, as Dorothy Parker once quipped, "compared to men, women have to work twice as hard to be thought half as good. Fortunately this isn't difficult."

No, this isn't the real reason why the idea of more women in leadership positions is so seductive. It is something more, isn't it? Isn't it because we believe that women will bring a superior edge to government? That women will act in a softer, kinder more intuitive way, will be less confrontational and demanding, in short that feminine politics will be better politics?

This certainly is the received wisdom. But, really, ask yourselves, is this so? If it were the case wouldn't we women simply form ourselves into a political party? Certainly there are all kinds of specific issues in which women are mightily involved, and for understandable reasons, issues to do with health, children, the family and so on. But for the wider issues - do women take any different position on the Middle East, let's say, than men? For every woman who goes on a peace march there is another whose views are diametrically opposed. At the G8 would female leaders of Germany, the United States and France act any differently from their male rivals?

Does Mrs Merkel, or did Mrs Thatcher come to that, take decisions in any way noticeably different to that in which a man would have responded to the same challenges? Indeed there are considerable pressures on a woman to act in ways that prove she is not weak or soft or feminine and for this reason, perhaps, 'the female of the species is more deadly than the male,' as Rudyard Kipling wrote once.

Of course I welcome the fact that more women are reaching the highest circles of government, business and the professions, though the truth is that vast swathes of women in many countries remain locked by their gender into poverty, degradation and illiteracy. We must all work to improve the status of women everywhere. But let us not add to the challenges that women leaders already face by heaping expectations upon them and turning them into superheroes.

Posted by Fennie Somerville