Having female leaders would do nothing to assuage the various political pressures that force people into pushing for bad policy - elections, campaign donations, favors, and everything else that goes into politics today would still apply. Removing men from positions of power simply for the sake of putting women in positions of power is idiotic. If a woman is to be in a position over a man, it should be because of merit, not because she's a woman, and to argue that simply being a woman somehow makes her more able is just stupid.

" If a woman is to be in a position over a man, it should be because of merit, not because she's a woman, and to argue that simply being a woman somehow makes her more able is just stupid."

Why is it that 90% of the prison population is comprised of men? Why are over 90% of the murderers men? Just a long standing statistical anomaly?

http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/rfisman/papers/fairersex.pdf

I'm not saying that the world hasn't been run by men. For the purposes of this topic, I don't care that it has because I don't have any control over the past, only the future. I'm saying that leaders shouldn't be chosen based on sex but by merit. There shouldn't even be a discussion on that; it's common sense.

Common sense is not something Putin33 was blessed with.

But all things being equal, women are less prone to criminality, and more likely to be public spirited than men. So on balance they make better public officials.

That's quite the leap of logic.

Maybe so, Putin, but to say that political leadership should be composed of only women is insane because all things aren't equal. That's the exact same kind of generalization you criticized on the previous page of this thread. When it comes to individual people, all things aren't equal, and while some studies may show that when generalized women come out better off than men by a statistically significant margin, basing an entire political ideology around that generalization is to completely discount the merits of individual candidates.

Yes but in a low information environment, which voting typically is, people don't know any of the candidates running. Often times the candidates have a limited paper trail, in which case they need heuristics. Betting on women is a safe bet.

Common sense is not something Putin33 was blessed with.

+1000

We also have some very right-wing women that would be dangerous with too much power .... look no further than Sarah Palin or various female nutters in the tea party.
But I think the general point is that we need desperately to have more women in senior positions throughout society, would we have had the financial crisis if we had had more women in the boardrooms of banks and investment houses.
Too much testosterone can be a dangerous thing, combine that with arrogance and ignorance and you have a lethal destructive cocktail. If we men are that smart how come we have not already worked this shit out already ..... maybe we are not as smart as we think we are.

Or maybe life is just complicated and there are no ultimate solutions to society's problems. Why do you people think women are magic?

Invictus, it is all about balance, just like everything else in life.

@Putin ... Is it really more appealing to simply write out men than ask people to research candidates before they vote for them? Is "safe ignorance" (finger quotes) really a better option than asking people to spend five minutes to look up more than party lines? It's not like there's a massive database of information that nearly everyone in the developed world has access to or anything.

@Nigee ... Nope. Sorry. Wall Street would be no less of a mess if it was predominantly women in suits driving BMWs than it is men in suits driving BMWs. You're completely missing the lesson in this collapse, that having the ability to throw money around without fear of any personal repercussions is dangerous to everyone, and that's what the top financial institutions have the luxury of in today's world. It has nothing to do with men versus women.

One of my least favorite cliches.

That's in reference to the idea everything needs "balance."

I think we have gotten somewhat off topic.

Researching candidates? For one, most candidates have the same or similar qualifications and backgrounds. For two, it's actually quite difficult to get detailed information on down ballot candidates in any given election. For three, hardly anybody knows what their local government is doing or what these local offices are responsible for anyway. Ask the average voter what their county auditor does, or what the difference is between the auditor and the treasurer, or the county clerk, etc. Ask them what recent cases have come before the probate court which could tell them about the "merits" of the incumbent.

People have romantic notions about elections and voting.

I still don't see how it follows that women are inherently better public officials.

"People have romantic notions about elections and voting."
This is very true Putin .... what you actually need more than elected officials is honest officials, dishonesty and corruption negates and undermines a whole variety of governments and institutions and corporate businesses.
Democracy in itself is not the end ..... just the means to an end.

Welcome to webDip, where not going off topic probably means the thread has been taken over by such hostile flamers that no one wants anything to do with it anymore.

@Putin ... My point is that people can find these things out. If you want to know about a local candidate, attend a fundraiser. If you want to know what they do, almost every local candidate would still have a webpage that can be found easily enough. If you don't care about local politics, you're ignorant as to how much importance local policy has and you shouldn't involve yourself in the local process if that's the case.

If there's any problem we ought to have with our elections, it's the first one you listed - almost everyone running is either a lawyer or in business. There is so much perspective missing, and while there is a general perspective dichotomy between men and women, there is a very clear and rational difference in perspective between a lawyer and a scientist for example, or a businessman and a teacher. There's a bigger opportunity to expand political perspective and awareness by including more people based on specific accomplishments they've made in their lives and things they do (i.e. merit).

@Nigee ... You usually post a lot of fluff that hides the finer points but tonight it's just blabber. Say something meaningful.

"My point is that people can find these things out."

You fight with the army you have not the army you want. People have stuff to do or that they want to do other than voting. They don't want to spend hours researching candidates for an election they barely care about anyway, if they even care enough to vote to begin with. They want a quick and easy way to decide among unknown people who to vote for.

"There's a bigger opportunity to expand political perspective and awareness by including more people based on specific accomplishments they've made in their lives and things they do (i.e. merit)."

Nothing is preventing those people from voting. Although I'd rather have people who actually know about law making laws than other people. That's my idea of 'merit'. I wouldn't want to hire a plumber to be my surgeon.

*Nothing is preventing these people from running for office I mean

So... why are women supposed to be better public officials?

Putin, have i told you are irrelevant today?

YOU ARE

"They want a quick and easy way to decide among unknown people who to vote for."

Maybe so, but is that an option you'd really want to give people? That just makes the already-lazy even lazier.

"I wouldn't want to hire a plumber to be my surgeon."

That's not what including a wider range of professions is. It's asking a plumber to serve as an advisor of sorts to the surgeon that you also hired. When you're doing surgery, the plumber knows his limits, knows what he doesn't know, and doesn't interfere. On the contrary, when the surgeon needs his plumbing fixed, he has a plumber to help him out instead of doing so himself. When things fall in between, we turn to interest groups and lobbyists and things like that just as we do now. The difference is that instead of lawyers and businessmen that know how to complicate the English language and somewhat responsibly distribute money, we have lawyers, businessmen, scientists, teachers, anthropologists, police officers, doctors, preachers, or whatever to add some insight into whatever, and they split up into committee by profession.

"That just makes the already-lazy even lazier."

You know they're lazy so better to channel their laziness in productive ways. We're not going to get informed voters anytime soon if we haven't done so yet in all the years of competitive elections.

"t's asking a plumber to serve as an advisor of sorts to the surgeon that you also hired."

What does a plumber know about the law?

"What does a plumber know about the law?"

I don't know how you made that jump from metaphor to not-metaphor (is there a word for not-metaphor...?), but potentially just as much as you or anyone else does.