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MacPhee, on 08 May 2012 - 09:09 AM, said:
Yes, that's the point. Suppose women were, by nature, equally good leaders as men. Then women would just naturally take on leadership roles. No special laws would be needed, to kind of "smooth the way" for them. You'd see History replete with examples of women seizing power and ruling society. But does History show any woman who used force to become a ruler?
I’m not a historian, so can think quickly of only a few examples of women who used force, indirectly, to become rulers. The first to come to mind is Catherine II (“the great”), Empress of Russia 1762-1798, who deposed and replaced her husband, Peter III. Catherine didn’t personally, physically fight Peter, but appealed to and gained the support of elements of the Russian military. I believe such tactics – rulers, male or female, fighting by proxy with armies, rather than personally – were then and continued to be far more common than tactics involving the personally use of force.
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Women have to be forced into leadership roles by legislation - such a role does not come to them naturally. And it attacks their essential nature.
I believe that some hereditary rulers, male and female, are forced to accept their offices. However, some, such as Catherine the great, clearly exert much effort, incur great risk, and ruthlessly employ treachery and force to take them.
MacPhee, I believe you make the mistake of assuming that an attribute of a class of people applies to all individuals in it. I can’t scientifically support that women, on average, are less desirous or capable or being leaders of nations, but would not be surprised if a well-conducted scientific study showed this to be true. However, this does not mean that an individual woman is less desirous or capable of leading than an individual man, or that a woman in a position of opportunity to become a leader will not succeed in a completion against men in similar positions of opportunity.
In modern governments that elect their executive, such as the United States’, political competition for that office (In the US, the Presidency) are usually similar to those for other elected offices (eg: Senate and Representative seats). Although every US Executive has been, and most legislators are, male, some legislators – about 17% - are female (source: this senate.gov document). Many of these women won election contests against male candidates.
I believe this, and similar data of present day and old governments, refute the idea that all women leaders have to be forced into the role.
It is true that, in many nations, women were once, and in some nations, still are, prohibited by custom and/or law, from holding public office, and many other privileges granted by law to men, such as voting or owning property. In many if not all cases, these customary and legal prohibitions were explicitly voided by legislation, though in many nations, this legal history is complicated – in the US, in 1920 the 16th Amendment explicitly prohibited denying the right to vote on account of sex (gender), but doesn’t address women holding public office. As the US Constitution grants the right to hold public office to “people”, not exclusively “men”, it’s arguable that women have always held this right, and the right to vote in the US, but prac
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May I salute Craig D's post #12, as a valiant but desperate PC attempt to defend against what everyone, at heart, knows to be true.
It’s false that everyone, at heart, knows it to be true that women are inferior to men as leaders or in most other roles, as I know in my heart that this is false.
Worse, I believe that the idea that women should not be afforded the same customary and legal privileges as men is, I think, a bad one, for many reasons. I believe women, and men, should be free to chose not to exercise a given legal privilege, such as voting or attempting to win election or appointment to public office, but not prohibited by law from doing so.
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