# What if women ruled the world? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 1, 2011, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-ruled-the-world/590992 "2011-08-01T01:38:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-ruled-the-world/590992/141 "2011-08-02T03:53:06Z")
> [@Scotty Mo](#): > > Will this do? > > [http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/07/06/women-will-rule-the-world.html](http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/07/06/women-will-rule-the-world.html) No, no, and more no. You just gave a counterargument to your own thread. Females now make up the majority of the workforce but that nothing to do with anything in this thread. It simply shows that many females are doing just fine on their own and the potential supply of female politicians will become greater as the younger professional females become older. Undergraduate, law and medical schools have been shifting towards female dominance for a number of years now. That article is a good thing for females but it has nothing to do with political office. You are talking about instituting affirmative action for the group that is becoming dominant in many areas already. Maybe really smart females tend to be more interested in things other than politics like practicing medicine. ---
**Author:** ![panaccione](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/94ad74/32.png) [@panaccione](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panaccione)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-ruled-the-world/590992/142 "2011-08-02T04:01:32Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > You aren’t looking very hard then because lots of reasonable and informed people who have been on polar opposite sides in every other thread since this board was created gave you good reasons while you didn’t do much anything. I personally think that my family should be installed as a hereditary monarchy. We are fairly well educated, good with money, and compassionate. I fail to see how you can argue with that. > > You are aware that the women’s suffrage movement was already successful a long time ago right? Your arguments or lack thereof are so perplexing I think we should leave no stone unturned. > > You did finally throw out an actual idea however no matter how strange. Let’s see if you can actually articulate into something that could be passed as a law in the U.S. What law or Constitutional amendment could you write that would ensure there are equal numbers of male and female politicians? Be extremely specific because your law has to apply to thousands of political offices at all levels. I don’t think you can write a coherent first paragraph based on this idea so prove me wrong. What do I look like a politician? I’m just a guy with an idea. The way I see it, there is a lot of violence in this world carried out by men and with no real end in sight. The democrats and republicans, who are all men are all the same. What better way to shake things up in this world than to give women a shot. Men have ruled since the beginning of time and we can all see what that leads to. Women - never. How can you argue that they shouldn’t be given a shot? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-ruled-the-world/590992/143 "2011-08-02T04:04:11Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > I’m sure this has surprised…no one? Did anyone seriously think women were even close to males when it comes to violent crimes? The only serious crimes they’re even close to are things like fraud or embezzlement. There’s domestic violence; men and women are equally likely to attack each other. And child abuse, although women lean less towards molestation and more towards physical abuse & torture with that. Women criminals are it’s true less likely to be arrested and prosecuted and convicted; but that doesn’t mean they aren’t committing crimes. It just means the authorities prefer to go after men. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-ruled-the-world/590992/144 "2011-08-02T04:07:56Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > There’s domestic violence; men and women are equally likely to attack each other. And child abuse, although women lean less towards molestation and more towards physical abuse & torture with that. Women criminals are it’s true less likely to be arrested and prosecuted and convicted; but that doesn’t mean they aren’t committing crimes. It just means the authorities prefer to go after men. Or that men are more likely to commit crimes in public, or are more likely to get caught because they don’t cover their tracks as well, or any one of a dozen more hypotheses we could come up with… ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-ruled-the-world/590992/145 "2011-08-02T04:16:52Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Or that men are more likely to commit crimes in public, or are more likely to get caught because they don’t cover their tracks as well, or any one of a dozen more hypotheses we could come up with… Those too. And as far as I know the evidence is that yes, men really are more likely to commit violent crimes in front of witnesses, and are worse at covering their tracks. ---
**Author:** ![punch\_line\_loser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8e7dd6/32.png) [@punch\_line\_loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/punch_line_loser)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-ruled-the-world/590992/146 "2011-08-02T04:23:17Z")
> [@Scotty Mo](#): > > What do I look like a politician? I’m just a guy with an idea. The way I see it, there is a lot of violence in this world carried out by men and with no real end in sight. The democrats and republicans, who are all men are all the same. What better way to shake things up in this world than to give women a shot. Men have ruled since the beginning of time and we can all see what that leads to. Women - never. How can you argue that they shouldn’t be given a shot? You’re not listening. We can not “all see what that leads to.” One of the main points we’ve been trying to make is that you **cannot assume a causal connection between men being in power and violence.** There has also been contrary evidence to the “women - never” point. You haven’t been able to provide any convincing evidence of the connection between men in power and increased violence OR women in power and decreased violence, and simply insisting on what appears to be a personal opinion that many of us simply disagree with is not convincing anyone. Not to mention the fact that you haven’t been distinguishing between violence within the society itself, like violent crime, and violence between societies, i.e. war, which can’t rightly be lumped together as one kind of violence. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-ruled-the-world/590992/147 "2011-08-02T04:24:03Z")
> [@Scotty Mo](#): > > What do I look like a politician? I’m just a guy with an idea. The way I see it, there is a lot of violence in this world carried out by men and with no real end in sight. The democrats and republicans, who are all men are all the same. What better way to shake things up in this world than to give women a shot. Men have ruled since the beginning of time and we can all see what that leads to. Women - never. How can you argue that they shouldn’t be given a shot? You really shouldn’t start threads like this if you can’t even present your own basic idea coherently. It is maddening to the people that are trying to understand what you actually want. You don’t have to be a politician to articulate ideas that you claim you came up with on your own. What is this idea other than a personal fantasy? You haven’t even gotten that far yet you felt compelled to start a thread about about. I like pie and think there should be more of it around but I didn’t start a debate on that. Democrats and Republicans are neither all male nor all exactly the same now even within the same party. Let me try to facilitate. What do you mean by give women a shot? Women vote and are free to run for office so we have that step covered. What’s next? You want equal numbers of male and female politicians. How do we do that assuming you snap your fingers and it becomes a Constitutional amendment? Is this all offices or just the flashy ones like Congress, governors, and the presidency? How would you get a guaranteed number of male and female presidents for starters? Do you just have only females run for president across all parties twice in a row to make sure all 8 years are covered by a female? Do males get the next 8 years guaranteed? What about congress? You have to have term limits to keep things equal or a popular male might take up a seat for decades. Instead of Red and Blue states, you could have Blue and Pink where all the politicians from each are of the same sex. California could be a girl state while Texas could be a boy state for example. Do any of those appeal to you? If so, why? If not, show at least one good way to do what your are talking about assuming you can design whatever you want based on your idea. ---
**Author:** ![panaccione](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/94ad74/32.png) [@panaccione](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panaccione)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-ruled-the-world/590992/148 "2011-08-02T04:44:51Z")
Well I’ll give it a try… Presidential candidates from each party must have one male and one female front running candidate. Also, whoever is elected must have their counterpart as their vice pres. 2 senators from each state right? One of those must be female. Don’t know much about how the house of reps. works but make that equal. At the very least, every position that is up for election, each party should have to put forth both a female and male as a choice. I imagine there would be enough women to apply for it. Would it really be that difficult to orchestrate? ---
**Author:** ![Indygrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@Indygrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indygrrl)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-ruled-the-world/590992/149 "2011-08-02T05:44:05Z")
> [@Scotty Mo](#): > > Well I don’t really have the time for that, sorry. Why can’t you just take my word for it? Because, honey, you are full of it. Your ideas about women make me think you don’t know any women. Now, I’m a woman, and a feminist, and I know from 37 years on the planet that it might look like men are barbarians with a penchant for war, and women nurture and get along, but that’s not reality. Let’s take a classroom of first graders, when boys get mad at one another they push, shove, call names, maybe have a fistfight on the playground and then go back to being friends. Girls, on the other hand, at age 7 know how to smile sweetly at a girl they are angry with, and go behind her back and lie, gossip, whatever. They know how to get into each other’s brains and just fuck 'em all up. And that’s 7 year olds! Again, boys and men punch, kick, and that’s how they fight. Women? Claw each other’s EYES out. The idea that women aren’t violent, or diabolical, or just evil is a sweet, naive idea, but it doesn’t even resemble the truth. ---
**Author:** ![Indygrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@Indygrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indygrrl)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-ruled-the-world/590992/150 "2011-08-02T05:57:13Z")
Women also hold one another to high, often unrealistic standards, with severe judgments about damn near everything. Don’t believe it? Visit any pregnancy or parenting site and broach topics like breastfeeding, attachment parenting, circumcision----and I think you’ll find, it’s not a “live and let live” vibe, it’s a judge and prepare to be judged atmosphere. And that’s just one example where we are hard on each other. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 9:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-ruled-the-world/590992/151 "2011-08-02T09:04:08Z")
Well, **Scotty**? Do you _know_ many women, besides your mum? Any longtime relationships? Women senior in rank to you? Women you serve with on any committee? Because I rather doubt your rosy view of women comes from much experience. ---
**Author:** ![blindboyard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blindboyard/32/2833_2.png) [@blindboyard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blindboyard)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 10:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-ruled-the-world/590992/152 "2011-08-02T10:34:04Z")
> [@Scotty Mo](#): > > Have equal numbers of women in office. Make it a law. If it holds true that people look at women as sweet, kind, and caring then thats what we’ll elect. But if not enough of them are given a chance, well we all just miss out on that opportunity. Really, I don’t see how anyone could argue with this concept. You don’t like democracy, then? Because we currently have a system where an electorate made up mostly of women elects what are mostly strong-arm politicians. In this country the granting of suffrage to women saw a massive strengthening of the Conservative party, with its Imperialist and warmongering ways. Women have continued to be disproportionately conservative voters ever since. They don’t have a good record of voting for peace and love. > [@Scotty Mo](#): > > How can you know? We’ve never experienced a world like that. What if their just following status quo? I don’t think anyone would accuse Thatcher of following the status quo, having totally reordered the economy against public ownership and equitable wealth distribution. She was a revolutionary with near-untrammeled power. And Mary Tudor, changed the official religion against the wishes of the majority and a large majority of the capital (which is to say, both the population of London and the capitalist merchant class with their Puritan ways), then she set fire to people who disagreed with her. Female leaders seem disproportionately likely to be revolutionary, but not by waging an unceasing campaign for pacifism. ---
**Author:** ![blindboyard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blindboyard/32/2833_2.png) [@blindboyard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blindboyard)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-ruled-the-world/590992/153 "2011-08-02T10:36:52Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Her little brother got the throne before her older sister because he had a penis. When Elizabeth did become Queen, she had to answer to a Council made entirely of men, and appeal to a Parliment, likewise all men, to actually get anything done. She was a woman, and she was a leader, but she most decidedly did NOT lead a matriarchy. She led a constitutional monarchy. She only relied on PArliament, as was then the custom, for money, and even then she had a relatively compliant parliament (compared to that of two monarchs later) and her own large revenues from land and investments in, for example, piracy. She had the power to do whatever she wanted, remained unmarried to keep a monopoly on power, and was impressively ruthless, although not as psycho as her sister. ---
**Author:** ![blindboyard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blindboyard/32/2833_2.png) [@blindboyard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blindboyard)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-ruled-the-world/590992/154 "2011-08-02T10:39:17Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > Have there been genocides started by women? I can see women shooting some guys with a high-powered rifle from yards away, but raping people? Or killing babies? I can’t see it happening on a regular basis. The largest number of babies murdered are killed by their own mothers. Think how much easier it is to kill someone else’s! > [@](#): > > I don’t think things like female circumcision were a woman’s idea. Or that women came up with the ideas of foot-binding and wearing burkhas. Even though women re-enforce and perpetrate these cultural monstrosities, I don’t see them being hatched out of a mind of a woman. Likewise, I can’t see a woman thinking, “Hmm, those X-people over there are REALLY working my nerves! Let’s torture and kill all of them, especially the babies! Let’s get our rape on, ya’ll! Woohoo!” I just can’t. That’s your inability. Women don’t sit around thinking how fluffy kittens are all day, you know. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-ruled-the-world/590992/155 "2011-08-02T11:03:34Z")
> [@Scotty Mo](#): > > P.s. In my utopia, women would run things and men can play sports to entertain them. :rolleyes: This is seriously sexist on the level of “barefoot and pregnant”. And as a mostly non-violent sports hating man I don’t really see the appeal of your utopia. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-ruled-the-world/590992/156 "2011-08-02T11:12:10Z")
> [@blindboyard](#): > > The largest number of babies murdered are killed by their own mothers. Think how much easier it is to kill someone else’s! > > That’s your inability. Women don’t sit around thinking how fluffy kittens are all day, you know. Well, duh! I am a woman. I think I know what a woman thinks about. And do you normally engage in false dichotomies? Not thinking about genocide does NOT mean your mind must be filled with fluffy kittens all day. And that goes to the point I made about Hillary Clinton. If we had a woman prez and she hesitated to send troops somewhere, someone would be thinking, “Oh, poor thing. She must have fluffy kittens and baby elephants on the brain.” I didn’t say that I don’t think women are capable of genocide. Just that, my experience as a woman and a person who knows lots of women makes it hard for me to imagine women, as a big group, being rah-rah about killing innocents. Especially children. Not that any individual guy I automatically meet is rah-rah for genocide, but men on this very board have said some crazy-ass things that would make me think them quite capable of wiping out a whole race of people if they got angry enough and had the manpower. Maybe they were just being poseurs, but it is something I couldn’t imagine women saying, even if they were just joking. Is it an unfair generalization to say that women tend to be more empathetic than men? If there’s a grain of truth here, I cannot see how people can say that it wouldn’t matter who’s in power, things would play out the same. I think that’s a lazy answer to an improbable-to-test-“what if” scenario. It’s safer to just say we don’t know rather than to assume things would be the same. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-ruled-the-world/590992/157 "2011-08-02T11:16:08Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Now…just to play Devil’s Advocate for a moment…none of these women ruled in a matriarchy. Just because a country has a female head of state does not make it a matriarchy. > [@](#): > > Which I believe goes to what \*\*monstro \*\*was saying above. It’d be interesting to see what \*forms \*of governance a matriarchy might take, were women given a blank slate and unopposed power over a significant portion of the world (if not all of it) for a significant period of time. Again, though, I’m unclear on the logistics. If we play devil’s advocate, then giving power to a whole matriarchy instead of just having a female head of state means – what, exactly, if **Scotty** is right? What happens when the “sweet, kind, and caring” caricatures he envisions make their proclamations in front of male subjects – who, as per **Scotty** , dominate folks by perpetrating violence? He says: _“I don’t see women raping, controlling and killing groups of men anytime soon.”_ So when the local males start raping and controlling and killing, how will the peaceful matriarchy of non-soldiers respond? ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-ruled-the-world/590992/158 "2011-08-02T11:38:02Z")
I think **Scotty Mo** s confusing being nice because you’re inherently nice, and being nice because you’re not physically equipped to be nasty. Women are in the minority for muggers, e.g. because most women could’nt ; because of their build, physically overcome their male victims, and their female victims usually shout for help from men. As to women leaders, Maggie Thatcher was one of the most aggressive P.M.s we’ve ever had. Both in domestic politisc,where she took on the unions, and in international politics where she fought the Falklands war. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-ruled-the-world/590992/159 "2011-08-02T11:51:02Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > I didn’t say that I don’t think women are capable of genocide. Just that, my experience as a woman and a person who knows lots of women makes it hard for me to imagine women, as a big group, being rah-rah about killing innocents. On the other hand, over the years I’ve heard various women call for or speak with approval about the extermination of all men.\* Which of course is how they get around any inhibitions about killing innocents; they tell themselves men are innately evil, so killing them doesn’t count. Which is a difference between the genders; bad as they can be I’ve never run across a male sexist who said he wanted all women dead, or any stories written about a “Utopian” world where all the women are dead. I’ve certainly come across the opposite however; stories where paradise is achieved after all the men are killed by a tailored plague or herded into disintegration chambers. \*And many more who stop short of outright genocide but make it clear they care nothing at all for the lives of men, often with comments about how great it would be if men all just happened to die off. ---
**Author:** ![JFfordeFan23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b9e5f3/32.png) [@JFfordeFan23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JFfordeFan23)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-ruled-the-world/590992/160 "2011-08-02T11:53:16Z")
I believe we would certainly see a spike in uxorious men. 🙂 As for the meat of this debate, there is little evidence, consciously available to me, that suggests women would skew less agressive politically or militaristically. Women are not automatically pacifistic in nature and, often, do not manually lean that way. These are tired stereotypes, IMO. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-ruled-the-world/590992.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-women-ruled-the-world/590992.md?page=9)