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What about a political body that was required to be half male and half female? That would be a big improvement over current levels of female representation and could not be called unfair to either gender.
"At the risk of making a sweeping generalisation, I'm going to say such ideas are completely alien to the way female human primates think. "
Greed + Power = Invasion. Are you saying that women are somehow above greed?
Lumping female primates into one category for consideration is a sweeping generalization in itself, especially when considering how they think. The behavior of chimpanzees hardly convince me of correlative behaviors in humans. Despite genetic relation, the two are very different in many ways.
Considering your remarks about the nature of testosterone, I am led to wonder how much your argument is based on science, and how much of it on conventional 'wisdom' and perhaps even superstition.
David, you seem to be somewhat ignorant of the effects of testosterone, which surprises me. You are likely adhering to the results of discredited, outdated studies.
Testosterone does not cause aggression. Testosterone stabilizes the mood of both males and females. "Roid rage" is actually caused by the falling testosterone levels that result from steroid abuse. Low testosterone is believed to cause dementia. So in effect, a high testosterone leader is more peaceful and stable than a low testosterone leader. Considering that most leaders who have initiated wars have been middle aged relatively low testosterone males, I think this explains a lot.
7% of vehicle crashes involve alcohol. So no, most car accidents actually don't occur as a result of ethyl alcohol consumption. And most wars are caused by disputes over wealth (this includes territory) and status. I think a female leader would defend her country's territory and resources as well as a male ruler would. It's worth noting that women are much more sensitive to testosterone's highs and lows than men are.
I don't think the stakes are nearly as high as you suggest. The Cold War ended 20 years ago. As I said, testosterone is unlikely to cause nuclear holocaust. Only a lunatic would initiate nuclear war knowing the consequences.
You are dancing around the fact that there is a more just solution to the problem than the one you advocate. Elect nicer leaders of all genders, and this threat is minimized, more so than making female leadership mandatory. The idea is silly, and unlikely to be implemented, much less, succeed at reducing survival risk.
Nicer, to claim wars begin as a result of testosterone is no less of a "travesty" than to claim car accidents begin as a result of ethyl alcohol. Drinking ethyl alcohol is neither necessary nor sufficient for car accidents. Yet high blood alcohol levels are a risk factor in car accidents. In consequence, our drink-drive laws have saved thousands of lives.
By analogy, careful study of the historical, ethnographic and evolutionary evidence bears out what neuroscience demonstrates experimentally i.e. elevated testosterone promotes hostility, territorial aggression and risk-taking. It would be surprising, to say the least, if an all-women political class were equally likely as a male power elite to launch "wars of choice", pursue "Lebensraum (etc). At the risk of making a sweeping generalisation, I'm going to say such ideas are completely alien to the way female human primates think. One day, we shall transcend human biology. Until we do, all possible safeguards should be examined - dispassionately, rigorously, and with the same cool critical detachment as if a new technical safety-feature were proposed for, say, our nuclear weapons systems.
Unlike blood alcohol levels, men and women don't choose their level of testosterone function. [The exception is "roid rage"-prone anabolic steroid users - with predictable results.] So replacing a male-dominated power elite by an elected all-women legislature and executive wouldn't be "fair". But men and women alike have a vested interest is securing our survival prospects. So fairness isn't the critical issue here - such a political safety-measure could be introduced only by broad consent. And no doubt men will continue as now to dominate business, finance, sport, the media, academia (etc) and hence continue to enjoy greater opportunities than women for career advancement.
There is just one area where I think the risks of male dominance are too immense to justify the status quo - the stakes are so ridiculously high.
@postfuturist
I have no theory to undercut. Men are generally more physically capable of raping someone due to having, on average, greater strength than women. Men are also more likely to take such a risk than women. I hope you don't think that those facts were presented to excuse male rapists. It explains the statistical difference between frequency male and female rapists, nothing more.
In contrast, women usually use weapons (or sometimes men) to cause harm, and female rapists usually victimize children, adolescents, and other women for obvious reasons. Women are much (almost 50%) more likely to abuse or kill children, both their own and the children of others. Women are more often caretakers of children than men.
I don't see one being worse than the other. People of all genders can do despicable things.
Saying "the Boston Strangler was no worse than any woman" is silly, because a murderer is worse than virtually all women and men who are not murderers.
I think that a female leader in a wealthy country would arm her country with the best weaponry technology can produce in the event that it is needed, regardless of what she intended to do with the weapons, or what she 'inherited'. It's romantic to believe that a female leader would destroy all weapons of warfare, but I think that's pretty unlikely, and that it would be unwise for her to do so.
Of course all women cannot be blamed for war. But female leaders who instigate wars can be blamed for the wars they begin. Women aren't children. They can be held responsible for their actions. It's equally as fallacious to blame all men for war. But it's okay to blame George W. Bush for the Iraq War. Most men do not start wars, and want nothing to do with war.
I also think that the assertion that wars begin as a result of testosterone is a travesty. Men and women both produce it as an important agent in many bodily functions. War is largely about wealth and status, two things that men and women both value equally. The only solution is to have kind, selfless leaders of either gender. A greedy female leader would be as likely to initiate an "Operation Iraqi Freedom" as a greedy male leader.
IEET guys,
It's very disappointing that you apparently still are in the habit of extremely blatantly misrepresenting what people who you don't like have said.
Peter Thiel hasn't said that "women shouldn’t even have the right to VOTE", and it's very hard to come up with a charitable explanation for why you continue to perpetuate such silly interpretations of what he has said.
(What he has said is e.g. that the influence of libertarians lessened when women were given the vote, because much fewer women than men like libertarianism. This is a statement regarding historical facts -- one you probably agree with! -- not a claim on whether women should be allowed to vote or not.)
I don't particularly like having to defend Peter Thiel, but an honorable person just can't stand by when you are repeatedly so blatantly misrepresenting someone, even if it's someone one might not really like oneself either.
Not that women are 100 percent not to be blamed for war, however as an example:
even if a widow possesses "defense" investments inherited from her husband, she did not build those weapons represented by the holdings; she has never fought a war herself. She is only tangentially culpable-- as are adolescents.
"Mean men are just physically 'better equipped' to cause harm with their meanness than mean women."
This somewhat undercuts your theory that men are no worse than women; if I write
"the Boston Strangler was no worse than any woman, he was merely better equipped to throttle his victims",
it doesn't sound quite... right, does it? Or:
"men aren't more inclined to rape, they are just better equipped to do so"
-- sounds even worse in some way.
@David
If I lived in the Islamic world, I'd certainly be dead.
We should form a club.
A solution to a problem that causes many more problems than it solves is indeed silly.
In countries like the US, where I live, leadership is male dominated, but not male exclusive. Females can and do get elected to high office. This is fair.
A system wherein potentially good, peaceful leaders are disqualified solely on grounds of their gender is unfair. This is similar to the situation in the Islamic world. Silly.
Nuclear defense technology has been largely used as a deterrent. Few leaders are crazy enough to actually initiate nuclear war, in fact, none thus far.
Would female leaders use the best available technology for defense? I'm sure they would. Women will fiercely protect what they feel they must, by whatever means available to them. So yes, female leaders that could afford to do so would likely have nuclear weapon system, or whatever the technology de jour provides. Is there a reason you believe otherwise?
Even mean a mean leader, female or otherwise, would be reluctant to start nuclear war. It takes a crazy leader to do that.
I wonder if the lack of women in power has anything to do with female biology. It is clear that males are more likely to vie for leadership roles. Perhaps females are biologically less likely to do so. Perhaps the women that do reach for power are no different than the males who do so in many or all significant respects. Perhaps this ambition is what causes war. That would be problematic. These are profound questions that might take a long time to answer, but certainly not as long as the social change you hope for.
Before we settle for a half-baked, unlikely solution to a problem due to paranoia, it is important that we actually find the sources of the problem and address them appropriately.
In my opinion, if your solution to a social problem demands gross injustice, you're not thinking hard enough.
Nicer, affirming that you value fairness over survival is a controversial position to take. I don't want to take issue with your claim here, merely to note that the opposite position, namely that in some circumstances survival is more important than fairness, is too substantial simply to be dismissed with the epithet of "silly". Recall that the existing male-dominated political system is unfair too. Such unfairness could in principle be justified if the outcome were a diminished risk of catastrophic war. Clearly this isn't the case.
Either way, the proposal to elect an all-women political representatives could only work with the broad democratic consent of a majority of men and women alike.
If the transition to an all-female political class were simply a case of having a handful of female rather than male fingers on the nuclear button, then any reduction in global catastrophic risk - though not negligible - might not be large. But in practice any such transition would mark a sea-change in our entire political culture. Thus would an all-female - rather than mostly male - legislature and executive be just as likely to authorize the long-term development and funding of nuclear weapons systems?
@David
I value fairness over survival. There are worse fates than death. Possibly securing human survival is not worth inevitably creating a dystopia, whether it is instantiated by the democratic tyrannic majority or not.
Besides, there is nothing inherent about female leaders that would prevent, say, the initiation of nuclear warfare. It only takes a handful of well placed nukes to destroy human civilization. Only electing nice, peaceful leaders could minimize this risk. There are members of all genders that fit this bill.
I don't think drink and drive laws are discriminatory. Drunk drivers choose to drink, and they choose to drive. People don't choose their genders, and they are largely immutable.
If a male is a qualified, peaceful, candidate, he should be allowed to hold whatever office he qualifies for. As you said, it goes much deeper than gender. Thus, the proposal is silly.
It's worth stressing that this kind of proposal could only work by consent - of a majority of both men and women alike. The proposal is crude and discriminatory, just as our drink-drive laws are discriminatory. But they save lives. The difference is that an all-women political class might be expected to save four or five orders of magnitude more lives than drink-drive laws.
If we acknowledge that biological risk factors are relevant, then one obvious suggestion is that more refined biomarkers than gender are appropriate. Testosterone function is only one risk-factor among many. Yet in an era of weapons of mass destruction, I think the stakes are so huge that even such a crude touchstone of potential suitability for political high office is better than using no biological scorecard at all. The issue isn't fairness but human survival.
How about if only "nice people" were allowed to rule? There are plenty of nice men and women in the world. Put the qualified ones in power. Put the meanies out of power. Nice people are bound to get along with each other, whatever their differences.
Men tend to be more aggressive than women, but aggressiveness isn't necessarily a bad thing. Being mean is certainly a bad thing. But I don't believe that men are meaner than women, or that there are more mean men than mean women. Mean men are just physically "better equipped" to cause harm with their meanness than mean women.
Let's make kindness the determining factor, and if it happens that there are more nice female leaders than males, or vice versa, we should be happy with that. But restricting leadership by gender is plain silly, and takes society backwards.
It is never possible in Muslim world where womens are not allowed even to vote. In most of the countries where equality of gender rights is practiced it may be possible. Even then the inducing effect of non compliant countries will disrupt the peace process in such type of economies.
It is never possible in Muslim world where womens are not allowed even to vote. In most of the countries where equality of gender rights is practiced it may be possible. Even then the inducing effect of non compliant countries will disrupt the peace process in such type of economies.
"Passive aggression takes the form of not physical violence, but lots of emotional hurt."
It's based on the Bell Curve: a minority of women will be "mean"; a minority will be "saintly"; the majority will be in-between. However men are worse, the majority of men are "mean"; the minority are "saintly".
Worth trying, as we having nothing to lose; patriarchy is a ticket to nowhere. Wouldn't even be bad if Palin were to be elected POTUS, she would modify her positions out of recognition, and what would would be a folksy Alaska-frontier blather to keep coots & codgers happy.
I agree with CygnusX, mindfulness is the key.
Although I voted for "that women wouldn't be any worse than men," but all you have to do is to look at high school/middle school girls to see their own kinds of meanness. Passive aggression takes the form of not physical violence, but lots of emotional hurt. And sometimes it can be suicidal because girls aren't willing to confront conflicts, with a lot of case of poisoning murders, e.g. Thallium poisoning, it was done by women. Men's violence is a lot more visible and thus sticks in our brain. It's called exposure bias.
For both men and women, circle of care expands from egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric--women tends to express that in care and love terms, men express it in justice and fairnesss terms.
See my blog post to get a 1st entry into mindfulness. this actually inspired me to do a post about feminism that I've been longing to do for a while.
http://www.cybernoeticman.com/2011/02/how-to-have-eternity-in-hour-in-5-easy.html
Want to seek an end to aggression? To aggressive nature and irrational behaviours?
Mindfulness is the key - read some Buddhism! - Change comes from within!
The world's problems are not genetic nor political but sociocultural. The answers to overcome self-ishness, fear and competitive behaviours are all and completely in our heads. Practice mindfulness!
It might be a good temporary solution to bring about more peaceful resolutions but it would create its own problems and resentment from the male population. Instead we should concentrate on equal balance of both genders and more importantly selecting pacifist leaders.
We face appalling risks this century whether our elected leadership is all-female or overwhelmingly male as now. I think the issue is risk-reduction rather than elimination. A transition to an all-female power elite could be achieved only by broad consensus of men and women alike.
Compare drink-driving. We now pretty much accept that we should disqualify ourselves from driving a car if we are above the medico-legal blood alcohol limit - despite believing that we personally can drive safely after a few pints. Yes, the relevant legislation is crude and discriminatory. Yet it saves lives. What is a "safe" level of testosterone function / ethyl alcohol consumption? Should one be politicking / driving while chronically mildly intoxicated? Recall that the correlation between testosterone levels and a predisposition to competitiveness, aggression, crimes of violence, increased dominance behaviour, reduced fear, empathy deficits, and risk-taking is both robust and well-established. Evolution "designed" men to be warriors. We are doing our best to civilize ourselves. But the biological risk-factor is ever-present.
A critic will respond by citing examples of bellicose women in politics. Doesn't a Margaret Thatcher or Sarah Palin refute the case for an all-female legislature and executive? But actually these examples are instructive in a different sense. To have any hope of advancing in politics, a woman most show she is harder and "tougher" than her male counterparts - in effect, to demonstrate she possesses those high-testosterone "male" traits that put us in such peril in the first place. A switch to an all-female political class wouldn't involve electing a bunch of "amazons". Instead the transition would involve a cultural-political sea change.
"It will never happen", says the sceptic. Probably not. In consequence, nuclear war this century is likely to kill hundreds of millions of people. Both the weapon designers and instigators of the conflict on both sides are likely - overwhelmingly likely - to be high-testosterone males.
Of course not. This suggestion couldn't be more short-sighted.
Even if women proved to be on average gentler rulers than men (and they probably would), how could disenfranchising half of the human population possibly result in peace? Males and female sympathizers would rebel, and they would be justified in doing so. It could potentially ignite a war to end all wars.
Equality is the only solution for peace.