Wednesday 4 December 2013

AUSA's Women's Campaign Convenor, Monique Bouffé writes about our last event: "Who Runs the World?" 'Do Women Make Better Leaders?'



Last week, Veronika Hoffman (President of the Politics and International Relations Society) and I (AUSA Women’s Campaign Convenor) ran an event titled ‘“Who Runs the World?” Do Women Make Better Leaders?’ with the shout out to Beyoncé just for kicks.

 The title was obviously provocative- designed to get people to ask us if we thought women were ‘better’ than men, and why we thought so, with all the issues that arose from it. (Just for clarification, if you really need it, neither I nor Veronika actually think this.) Before the event it occurred to me that the chosen title would not help with my ongoing campaign to convince people that the word “feminism” does not equate with women having more rights than men, but equality on every side of the gender divide, and that when I call myself a feminist I am not imagining myself dressed as Boudicca running around with a spear and surrounded by semi-naked men in chains. (You may think I’m joking, but I have recently been painfully made more aware that some people actually think this.) So my faith in humanity was somewhat restored when no-one brought this up.

Professor Marysia Zalewski spoke for about forty minutes, and we then had a Q&A/discussion round. I am not going to outline everything she said but instead raise a few points about the evening and my thoughts.


Marysia spent some time elaborating on why we would think women would make better leaders, and that this is all tied into our socially defined view of men and women- mothers versus soldiers, nurturers versus protectors. (Just to clarify, when I say men and women I’m referring to them in a cisgendered sense.) She quoted the President of Liberia, who publicly stated that she wanted to bring “motherly sensitivity” to the role. (I mean, really, what does that even mean!?) Obviously, this is wrong. There was general agreement from the audience, about differences between men and women not playing a part in leadership qualities. What was not mentioned however, and it’s something that I feel rarely gets pointed out- is that quite simply, men and women are different. From certain facets of our biology to the way we are raised, the way we are treated in the classroom and the relationships we have with the people who impact on our lives, we become two differing groups of the same species. What is important is that this is placed to one side when we are functioning in our schools, our friendship groups and key to this discussion, our jobs.

So why do we care whether women make ‘better’ leaders or not? Primarily, we feel it could solve the problem. More women in leadership roles means that overall discrimination will be reduced, women in charge are more likely to promote the interests of other women, the symbolism of having a woman in charge will make a big difference. Well, this is clearly not the case. Margaret Thatcher was an obvious example. Something else to think about with regards to her is that she is probably the most controversial Prime Minister of Britain since- well, ever. Sure, she did a lot of things and made many changes that incited outrage and debate. But would she be so infamous and would her name incite so much passion had she been a man? Has she tainted the position of Prime Minister for women to come? Some thoughts to chew on when discussing whether or not women in leadership are capable of solving gender discrimination.

The first question put to Marysia was about quotas, whether she agreed with them or not. I have to say that this is an issue which incites a lot of personal frustration and in fact I incidentally had the same conversation with someone on Saturday night. People are against quotas, there is huge resistance from both women and men. It comes from the fundamental idea that people of either gender should be employed on merit and should not be privileged because they are a certain sex. From the gentleman on Saturday night’s point of view, he would not want to fail an interview just because the other candidate was a woman and no other reason. “It may be a cynical view, but one could say you support quotas because as a woman you are benefitting from them”. Let’s point this out clearly: as a woman, I do not feel like I am “benefitting” from positive discrimination, the very wording of which makes me automatically uncomfortable. One of the big reasons people are against them is because no woman would want to be employed just because she was a woman, any more than someone would want to be employed because of their looks or because their Dad plays golf with the boss (and yes, that’s intentional stereotyping I’m using there.) Every person needs a feeling of self worth in their occupation, it is fundamental to being a happy and productive human being. However, as Marysia correctly said, this argument against quotas completely misunderstands the reason we are trying to put them in place. It is unfortunately a fact (note use of the word fact) that there is an unstated quota for men already in place. This is because there is a variety of social norms in place that we are not always consciously aware of that affect our decision making processes, and it is the sad case that many of them lead to women losing out in one way or another.  We need quotas for a period to break that cycle. We need to force employers to consider just as many women as men in their employment processes; we need women to be in equal numbers to men in the jobs they want to be in. Once this in place and we can see that the process is occurring naturally, we can remove quotas and see what happens. If the system degenerates to the way it was before, then we need to come up with a new solution. But right now, quotas seem to be the simplest and easiest enforceable way of doing it. Marysia stated “On balance, yes, I do agree with quotas”. She was much more eloquent than me in her argument, but I would go a step further. We need quotas for now, and I have seen that proven in the variety of women and men higher up in their careers who have sadly stated that we do need them. But I think I can speak quite plainly when I say no-one shouts “positive discrimination!” with enthusiasm.


As I was chairing the discussion I refrained from this rant. We moved on from quotas to more general points about women, gender, and discrimination. At this point I confess I was a little unsure of how to proceed. The discussion seemed to be veering rather off topic. We were no longer talking about female leaders, but the wider issues in gender discrimination- maternity and paternity leave hours, issues to do with childcare, popular culture- Marysia stated that if we are to look for issues with discrimination and perhaps their solution, the media was the first place to start. But was the point of the evening to talk about general gender discrimination, or discrimination and gender issues in the political forum?

So anyhow, I sat and watched and made notes on the various points many of the participants made about their own issues with sexism, their personal experiences and upbringing. This is something that I have now watched several times over, (predominantly) girls sitting in forums and sharing their own revelations about gender bias and how to get through life with it. I do think it is an incredibly important stage that every person has to go through, looking around at your society, breaking it down and realising the conscious and subconscious impact it has on your everyday life. But as I was supposed to be chairing, I was silently becoming a little anxious about the discussion leaving the advertised topic. I am grateful that Marysia (unknowingly) put me to shame on this point.
“Women have been having this discussion for years; the same things are said over and over. And see how it keeps coming back to the personal? It always comes back down to individual lives.” It’s true. Women (and men, to a lesser extent admittedly) have been saying these things for decades, coming to realise the intricacies of their society they didn’t notice before, and expressed frustration about it. If we are going to discuss issues about women in power, and how to get them there on an even footing, we need to start at the grassroots level. Both women and men need to make these realisations. But this process can’t keep happening generation after generation with no result. It has to trickle up somehow. We need to break the cycle of individuals after individuals developing ideas and then getting nowhere with them. Do we campaign? Do we stand outside Parliament with banners? Do we protest and get gender specified sweets, toys and pens banned? (For some amusing procrastination, please read the customer reviews here:
Is there another way to tackle this?
Or, do we dance to Beyoncé, discuss our revelations and try to make practical applications of these issues to our everyday lives? Feel free to comment below.


Many thanks to Veronika & the P&IR Society Committee for co-hosting a great event, thanks to Marysia for her enlightening words, and most importantly, thanks for the many girls and boys who came along with ideas, passion and debate. It was a fantastic evening.

Monique Bouffé

3 comments:

  1. Excellent blog and event and many thanks to Monique and Veronika for organising. I am curious (from a language point of view) if there was a conscious decision on the part of the author to use child nouns rather than adult nouns, and if so why. Merely curious.

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    1. Thanks a lot. Would "just for fun" suffice? No, I wanted to bring the tone down as it was a relatively informal evening after all. But as I am a novel blogger, feel free to correct me.

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    2. Haha, I wouldn't dream of correcting you, especially because there's no "correct" here (if there is anywhere). Thanks for explaining.

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