I’ve long pondered why more women do not pursue politics. Madeleine Kunin, the first female governor of Vermont, composed an interesting piece on the subject after visiting a Women’s Studies course where female students surprised her by expressing fear of being judged for speaking out. According to Kunin, we may be holding ourselves back by internalizing stereotypes about XX in power and politics:
Many women do not want to venture out into the “opinion world” until they are certain of themselves, the facts, and that they are right. They are afraid of being shot down. The result is often silence.
To be political means to speak out, to risk being called “catty”, or worse. I don’t hear men worrying about whether they may be right or not. They enjoy the fight, whether it is with words or fists. Women still tend to shy away from controversy, to be uncomfortable with competition. Perhaps that is why only 17 percent of the members of Congress are female, and men are still largely running the country.
Read her full thought-provoking article over at HuffPo…
April 6th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
I hesitate to talk about innate gender differences, but I have seen a similar phenomenon in teaching mathematics to students over the years.
More often than not, female students in my classes will not work on a mathematics problem unless they already know all of the steps that they need to undertake in order to solve the problem. In getting them to write proofs, I have a hard time convincing them to take initial exploratory steps (such as unwrapping the definition, try an approach and see if it fails, etc) that do not obviously lead to an answer.
Male students in my classes, on the other hand, appear to have issues on the other extreme. Namely, they try random stuff without thinking about whether it makes any sense or will help them achieve their goal. A lot of my educational effort in this case is getting the male student to “stay on task”.
I have never been able to tell if this is a gender issue or a cultural issue. However, for the most part I do not care. A good teacher understands that all students have different learning styles, and it is your responsibility to recognize the styles of each individual in your class.
April 6th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Is not speaking unless you are certain of your facts necessarily a bad thing? The fact that politicians (or anybody, really) speak without worrying about whether they are right or wrong is what gives us the nonsense that passes for political discussion today. I’d much rather the men try to take a cue from the ladies rather than have women trying to emulate the male approach which seems to be rooted in ignorance.
April 6th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
I’m afraid the speaker you quote is adding to the problem. As I take it, the problem is ‘men/women are this way’ (in her example, ‘They [men] enjoy the fight, whether with words or fists.’) Quite a few men are not fond of fighting with one, the other, or either.
Starting with that false premise, one winds up with the poor conclusion that one should try to make women more like men. Not really a plus. If what we need are people who act like men, we have quite a large pool of those to draw on. There’s no need to add ‘men’ who merely have XX chromosomes to distinguish them from the other sort.
More interesting, and useful, is to look in to what it is that really does contribute to success in politics (or physics, or engineering, all of which seem to have comparable percentages of women, iirc) and whether those are reasons of merit or not.
Now, closer to your (Sheril’s) current status and future is my mentee. She’s working on her PhD, and one of the things I’m trying to nurture in her is a bit of ‘Take a position and present it vigorously.’ Being science, of course she won’t have all the answers. “If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be science.” On the other hand, if she spends all her time talking about the uncertainties, she’ll never get to the part of discussing the interesting science she’s been doing. There’s a balance to be struck, and different people will strike it differently. But there is a point of merit here — you have to talk about your contribution before anyone will know that you have made one. (talk/write/publish/blog/…) I exaggerate her situation for effect, but have seen presentations where I wouldn’t be exaggerating. Now in her case, I’m pretty sure it isn’t a matter of the field and not wanting to appear ‘catty’ (or whatever) so much as she is a very softly-spoken person by nature (or at least ‘by the time I met her’).
April 6th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Is this a lead up to your announcement that you’re running for political office in 2010?
April 6th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Walker, that sounds strongly like a cultural thing. I don’t quite imagine that there could be some innate, sex-linked shyness factor. It just depends on what you get rewarded for growing up.
And a friend of mine made a point about women in politics – they lack a huge asset most male politicians have ready to go: a wife. Political wives can be huge assets. Michelle Obama is a notable example, but it’s rarely even as important on a national scale as it is on a local scale. A wife who is devoted to her husband’s political career takes care of networking, schmoozing, fundraising, and can act as a surrogate.
Political husbands tend to be less inclined to devote themselves to their wives’ work, for a variety of sexism-related and other cultural reasons. So that’s at least one structural factor that really works against women in politics.
And again, I think this effect is much stronger on a local level than a federal level. It’s one thing for Bill Clinton to help his wife run for President or NY Senator. But that level of support is much rarer when the stakes are for City Council or state legislature. And then higher office candidates largely come from that pool.