American politics
Democracy in America
Women in politics
Congress with a woman's touch
Jul 5th 2011, 19:05 by W.W. | IOWA CITY
THE New York Times reports on the campaign of Kirsten Gillibrand, the junior senator from New York, to encourage more American women to run for political office. America fares poorly in international rankings of the percentage of seats in national legislatures filled by women. Ms Gillibrand is especially concerned that the number of women in congress declined for the first time in 30 years after the 2010 elections. At present, women occupy just 16.4% of congressional posts. The main and most intuitive reason to seek greater gender parity in politics is to make our institutions of political representation more representative of the population. It is sensible to worry that a legislative body with relatively few women will fail to give due consideration to issues of particular concern to women or to take fully into account women's beliefs and desires about policy when they diverge from those of men.
However, Ms Gillibrand goes beyond representativeness to argue that greater female participation would improve the tone of legislative deliberation, suggesting that this might improve the quality of legislative decision-making generally. The Times reports:
Ms. Gillibrand goes a step further, arguing that an infusion of women into the political system would go a long way toward changing the tone in Congress, a male-dominated world of fiercely clashing egos.
“We tend to be more results-oriented and less concerned with getting the credit,” Ms. Gillibrand explained. “The female approach is more conciliatory and less combative. We tend to use a more civil tone.”
The piece concludes with this quotation from Ms Gillibrand:
“When women’s voices are heard,” she said, “the outcomes are better. That is what my grandmother taught me.”
Of course, whether or not one agrees that "the outcomes are better" depends on the meaning of "better" in this context. It's hard to disagree if the claim is just that women's interests and preferences are taken more fully into account when more women are involved in policymaking. But let's suppose the claim is that the increased influence of a characteristically female deliberative style would improve the quality of legislative deliberation and deliver better policy, in some broad sense of "better".
Intriguingly, my online social networks tell me that some very liberal women, who are fully behind the aim of getting more women in office, resist the idea that greater female involvement might improve politics and policy. I can understand why a feminist might want avoid the idea that the desirability of greater female participation somehow depends on the truth of the claim that women's more conciliatory, less combative approach would improve politics. Isn't the fact that women are just as capable as men, together with the very idea of democratic representation, enough? I think it is enough. But I also suspect Ms Gillibrand may be on to something.
Recent research from Anita Woolley, a professor of organisational behaviour at Carnegie Mellon, and Thomas Malone, a professor of management at MIT, finds that
There’s little correlation between a group’s collective intelligence and the IQs of its individual members. But if a group includes more women, its collective intelligence rises.
This fascinating interview with Ms Woolley and Mr Malone in the Harvard Business Review probes their provocative findings. Mr Malone says
It’s a preliminary finding—and not a conventional one. The standard argument is that diversity is good and you should have both men and women in a group. But so far, the data show, the more women, the better.
But why? It seems Ms Gillibrand is not wrong to suggest that women have a certain social savvy that improves group deliberation.
You realize you’re saying that groups of women are smarter than groups of men.
Woolley: Yes. And you can tell I’m hesitating a little. It’s not that I don’t trust the data. I do. It’s just that part of that finding can be explained by differences in social sensitivity, which we found is also important to group performance. Many studies have shown that women tend to score higher on tests of social sensitivity than men do. So what is really important is to have people who are high in social sensitivity, whether they are men or women.
It will be fascinating to see where this line of research leads. And it's fun to speculate about the difference a more womanly congress would make. For instance, what would the current, crazy game of debt-ceiling chicken look like in a more socially-sensitive, collectively intelligent congress?
(Photo credit: AFP)
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Yes, we need more people like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann in politics to bring a more civil tone. I think one of the greatest disappointments of 2010 was that the NY GOP failed to put up a decent challenger to Gillibrand.
Woolley's study used a random sample. It's entirely possible that in fields like politics, women behave more like men or worse.
RestrainedRadical:
"Yes, we need more people like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann in politics to bring a more civil tone."
No, we don't. We already got that more civil tone from Nancy Pelosi...
RR, Might not the selection effect you rightly suggest reflect the status quo's predominantly male style of deliberation and the conception of "politician" this has created in voters' minds?
Ah yes, i fondly remember the days of the famously conciliatory and non-combative speakership of Nancy Pelosi, a time when the speaker never stooped to taking credit and always maintained a studiously civil tone.
You, and Ms. Gillibrand are assuming that there is no difference between women in general, and the sort of women who decide to compete for, and compete effectively for, high corporate or political office. This is a strong - and not terribly plausible - assumption, seems to me.
Remember the time Sen. Barbara Boxer chastised Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) for calling her Ma'am?
"It's just a thing, I worked so hard to get that title, so I'd appreciate it, yes, thank you," she said.
It's true that women often are more gentle than men. However, it may also be noted that women often hold a grudge much longer than men, who can normally shrug off a fight over a pint. And since legislative bodies are often full of partisan fighting and harsh debates, there may be some serious revenge plotting done by women who cannot let it go.
On the upside for women though, more women in Congress will probably mean fewer sex scandals.
For the whole conciliatory thing, the self-selection counter-argument is a powerful one. However, on an intuitive basis I think that female politicians *would* be different if there were more of them around.
...Of course that's because in the alternate universe where we have more female politicians we would probably have needed slightly different gender attitudes/statuses to get to that point, meaning the self-selection would work a bit differently, which would be the main reason why the female politicians would be more conciliatory.
Moral of the story: more women in Congress should not be a goal in and of itself; it should be a useful dividend from the gradual advancement of the status of women.
Secondary moral: don't have La Chevre write your damn stories.
@WW, "Might not the selection effect you rightly suggest reflect the status quo's predominantly male style of deliberation and the conception of "politician" this has created in voters' minds?"
There could be some of that but I think a bigger factor may be that the politics attracts and rewards the aggressively power-hungry. The feminists I know support aggressive female politicians. They don't want calm deliberation on women's issues.
I reckon the crazy game of debt-ceiling chicken would look about the same.
There's a real chicken and egg thing that happens with politicians. Some probably do mold politics and the office they hold, while the norm is that current politics and the office held tend to mold the person.
My guess is that we really do have the politics we want and therefor deserve. The pressures put on politicians to maintain their 'base', keep their media howlers in line, keep their party leadership off their backs, and keep the funding machine running pretty much guarantee that male or female won't make much difference in the long run. Our choices of media to support, issues to die over, and party to rah-rah over, keeps the wheel turning.
They just elected a young woman, Yingluck Shinawatra as Prime Minister in Thailand. Both the Congress and the Senate in the US are too "Yang". Would be nice to have more "Yin" elements in US politics.
Incidentally, that is exactly what many Arab countries (and Iran) need to do.
Although if there were more women like Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, we might have a collectively intelligent congress. Now if only California were Maine ...
A greater female representation in congress would encourage girls and women in the whole country to focus more on their own political and professional careers. Then the presently under-utilized brains and abilities of women could more fully benefit the country. It seems to me that this effect would be much more positive and significant than any of the effects listed in the article.
Actually this is the same effect as when more representatives of minority groups (Muslims, African-Americans, Latinos, etc) get a representation more closely resembling their share of the total electorate. A black member of congress could be expected to understand some issues differently than a white colleague (issues related to discrimination, etc). However, a much greater positive effect of more coloured people in congress is the feeling among peoples with such a skin colour that they are not only in theory, but also in reality, free to fulfil their own individual dreams, whatever that might be.
The only real difference is that women in the US are a majority and not a minority. The figure 16.4% is just a disgrace. Period!
I guess I have two objections two W.W.'s argument, one practical and one theoretical.
I'm deeply uncomfortable with discussions of "smartness" in politics as some objective measure. Outside exceptional cases, I largely take it as an axiom that the best politicians for us are those that we voted for. The idea of objectively measuring the quality of the politicians we elect against an academic best case is too close to philosopher kings for me.
On a pragmatic level, I'm also uncomfortable with the idea of designating one social group as better than another at some higher social function. It may be true, but I think a world in which we accept that group A is better at political decision making and group B better at senior management in business is a worse one than one in which we pretend that every group is equal. The negative impact in terms of individuals perceiving themselves to be held back by social bias towards the more able group will greatly outcome any benefits.
Here's the analogy:
You have 10 men in a room, and each has an IQ of 80-120. You ask them to solve a problem. They argue, bluff, and bluster. Hopefully, the IQ 120 guy "wins" the argument and you get the 120 point solution.
Or, you have 5 men and 5 women in a room, and each has an IQ of 80-120. You ask them to solve a problem. They talk, share, communicate, and collaborate. Everyone contributes their individual knowledge and experience, and together they craft a 200 point solution, and better teamwork besides.
That is the best paradigm for Congress, and virtually every other house in the land. Unfortunately, as WW suggests, when Americans go to polls we think we are looking for "leaders", cheerleaders, heroes or saviors. Imagine a congress full of 535 quarterbacks and cheerleaders from 50 teams. Yep, that's what we wanted, and that's what we've got.
Women in general seem less inclined than men to let their egos make jackasses of them.
"The female approach is more conciliatory and less combative. We tend to use a more civil tone."
Obviously, Senator Gillibrand has never dated a woman.
@Well-balanced, I agree that empowerment begets empowerment but I hate the argument for affirmative action often given: "A black member of congress could be expected to understand some issues differently than a white colleague (issues related to discrimination, etc)."
The problem with that is that nobody can point to an actual issue that a black person would in fact understand differently from his white colleague. What did Governor Paterson understand that Spitzer and Cuomo could not? We aren't animals looking out only for our own survival. Humans have an amazing ability to empathize.
"Of course, whether or not one agrees that "the outcomes are better" depends on the meaning of "better" in this context."
Without knowing anything else this sentence would reveal that the author had studied philosophy.
Ordinarily, I would present all sorts of reasons against this. But with this Congress we're being subjected to... I'll try pretty much anything at this point.
An interesting theorey. I propose a test:
Let's create a budget reconciliation board jointly headed by palin, bachman, clinton and pelosi. If they can draw up a plan acceptable to most americans, then most sensible people might acknowledge it.
The theory may hold true for women on a macro scale. The possibility cannot be rejected out of hand. However writing of 'women' is about as clumsy a generalization as can be made.
I wonder if, should the theorey be true, that successful female politicians produce more partisanship than their male counterparts. Any benefits they provide from increased collective IQ (whatever that means) might be offset by the tendency for the public to have overly strong opinions on the matters that they champion. Lacking hundreds of thousands of dollars to waste, I may have to keep wondering.
Washington is making a very good argument for mankind to return to the trees and eat bananas all day. I doubt a congress of 85% women would inspire any more faith in man... uh... human kind.