Dr. Helen points out a contradiction in two media reports:
If these articles were trying to make a case against female leadership, they could not have done a better job–the stereotypes of women as demanding nags who are described as “queens” at home without any authority in the public sphere are hardly a ringing endorsement for female leadership.
The reason most women can’t lead effectively is that they are intellectually crippled by a lifetime of using their ability to grant or deny sex to the men who pursue them. This is why middle-aged women complain about suddenly becoming invisible and socially impotent, they are bankrupt in the only currency they have ever possessed. It is dangerous to expect to find much philosophical truth in pop songs, but Good Charlotte summed it all up in a nutshell when they sang “boys will laugh at girls when they’re not funny”.
Women tend to have different talents and preferences than men. They generally prefer multi-tasking, micromanagement and an emphasis on personal relations, combined with a desire to avoid responsibility, accountability and criticism. Therefore, we can reasonably conclude that they’re likely to succeed in leadership positions that don’t require focus, delegation, objective metrics, responsibility, accountability or flexibility.
But the biggest flaw I’ve seen in the business environment is female managers who attempt to treat their employees like children. Even worse is when they attempt to get a leg up on their peers or even superiors by doing so.
On a tangential note, one of Dr. Helen’s commenters cuts right to the heart of what every man despises about far too many women: “One thing that drives me bonkers are women who complain about how much they have to do when most of what they are complaining about IS VOLUNTARY.”
There’s nothing like sitting at a coffee shop and trying to write while being forced to listen to a group of overstuffed 50-somethings with androgynous haircuts spending the entire afternoon taking turns complaining about how busy they all are and what a bunch of useless husbands they all possess. Listening to five minutes of that irrational garbage is enough to convince anyone that the next growth market will be for a combined package of divorce plus an Eastern European trophy wife.
I don’t know why it is so hard for these supposedly intelligent women to learn that the more you complain, the less anyone listens to you. Economists call it the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility. If you don’t get it, consider this blog and how often I upset someone enough to make them fling an insult in my direction. Now, how could I possibly care about receiving one more insult? What is that one additional insult going to do that the previous one thousand didn’t?