Um Could This Possibly Be Why We Have Nuclear Weapons to Begin With?
The picture says it all. Thanks to Lucinda Marshall of Feminist Peace Network for calling it to my attention.
GLORIA FELDT is the New York Times bestselling author of several books including No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, a sought-after speaker and frequent contributor to major news outlets, and the Co-Founder and President of Take The Lead. People has called her “the voice of experience,” and among the many honors she has been given, Vanity Fair called her one of America’s “Top 200 Women Legends, Leaders, and Trailblazers,” and Glamour chose her as a “Woman of the Year.”
As co-founder and president of Take The Lead, a leading women’s leadership nonprofit, her mission is to achieve gender parity by 2025 through innovative training programs, workshops, a groundbreaking 50 Women Can Change The World immersive, online courses, a free weekly newsletter, and events including a monthly Virtual Happy Hour program and a Take The Lead Day symposium that reached over 400,000 women globally in 2017.
INTENTIONING
Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women
Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good
The new book from Gloria Feldt about the future, taking the leadership lessons learned from this disruption and creating a better world for all through the power of intention.
9 Comments
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Facebook comments
Mike ONeil
Nice theory, but. . . . Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir. nuff said.
Gloria Feldt
In a world defined by men for whom war is the defining narrative of history, women who want to be leaders must operate in that paradigm.
Facebook conversation continues
Yesterday at 8:06am ·
Vaughn Keller
Vaughn Keller
This is a highly questionable hypothesis given research in other venues.
Yesterday at 8:23am ·
Gloria Feldt
Gloria Feldt
Wait for my book where I’ll say more:-)
Yesterday at 8:51am ·
Lisa Cohen
Lisa Cohen
I’m with you, Gloria. I only see about 3 women. A lot is always made of military experience during elections. I’m am sick to death of the waste of war. When are we going to wake up and use our resources for better causes?
Yesterday at 11:30am ·
Mike ONeil
Mike ONeil
Agree with you, Gloria, re the paradigm. In the last election, Hillary positioned herself as the toughest (and most pro-military) candidate. She assumed she had to do this, and was probably right in this judgment. (9 times in 10, she would have won; she just happened to run head into a once-in-a-century phenomenon that could not have been predicted in advance). BTW, I don’t think she cracked the glass ceiling; she obliterated it. That barrier is gone; its only a matter of time and luck.
Yesterday at 12:19pm ·
Lucinda Marshall
Lucinda Marshall
One plausible explanation that has been offered elsewhere is that they missed the photo op because they were stuck in line at the ladies restroom.
Gloria Feldt
I just watched a documentary on Alexander the Great. Was musing about how when adolescent boys are in charge, the urge to combat is strong and the resistance to risk is almost nonexistent.
Gender studies raise fascinating issues. One of the conundrums is the nature/nurture controversy. For example, if the hypothesis is that women will “naturally” be more peaceful then men it opens up all sorts of unintended consequences and makes Larry Summers comments about women and science make sense. If one takes the “nurture” route, then as the environment changes, women change with it. We are seeing this in schools where girls are now more likely to engage in violence than boys at the middle school. The high school data is more equivocal. My own bias is to keep the focus on equal opportunity and not make assumptions about what women will do when they have the opportunity.
Tcoudohwn! That’s a really cool way of putting it!
nGoLhA khzhnnwiuwfi
WN71ON oupyocnoegyy
Seems plausible to me- our leaders would have a lot more time to get rid of nuclear weapons if they weren’t so busy putting on nice clothes and posing for cameras together. That’s what you were getting at, right?
More from Facebook
Pat Elliott
Gave me some goose bumps, I just read this yesterday: http://www.newsweek.com/id/235882
Yesterday at 2:03pm ·
Sheila Luecht
Sheila Luecht
I am with you on this Gloria, until I see this group both male and female, in equal or close to equal measure, or perhaps based on world demographic figures which would truly reflect the number of men and women on this planet, it is still a man’s paradigm of power. We have let them have the power too long and see how they have managed it? Oh and on the subject of Sarah Palin with respect to this, I am interested in educated leaders, nothing less.
Yesterday at 2:16pm ·
Debra Boehlke
Debra Boehlke
I don’t care if they have a formal education, but they need to be rational and smart! And we definitely need to change the ratios of men and women in the power structures.
about an hour ago ·
Gloria Feldt
Gloria Feldt
Excellent article, Pat.
Keith, I’m talking about gender rather than vanity though yours is an interesting theory too.
Vaughn, I think we agree that treating gender as a genetic precursor to any kind of behavior is dangerous. For the most part, gender, like race or any other attribute we’re born with, produces behavior on a bell curve that reflects the likelihood of nurture prevailing over nature. That said, the evidence is pretty clear from so many sources now that having gender balance at any decision making table is likely to result in better group behavior and better decisions. And that is really what I’m getting at. Perhaps it can be argued that women’s risk aversion (for example) is culturally induced and that over time if women have the kind of power that men have held we would lose the risk aversion and be as arrogant about risk taking as men are. But my position is that in the meantime, society would be much better served by gender parity in decision making positions. By the time women have held power long enough to start exhibiting more negative characteristics, we’ll all be long gone and those who come after might have a new set of problems to solve. So what? it’s still fairer and more democratic to have reached gender parity.
Here are two studies for example–the World Bank study of parliaments globally and the McKinsey study of business decisions:
http://www.catawit.ca/files/PDF/Mckinsey_women_matter.pdf
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/main?pagePK=64193027&piPK=64187937&theSitePK=523679&menuPK=64187510&searchMenuPK=64187283&siteName=WDS&entityID=000094946_01020805393496