My know-it-all friend claims that historically, women leaders have created wars, driven their countries to ruin, and been generally lousy heads of state. This prompts the following questions:
[ul][li]Historically, have governments led by women tended to prosper or decline?[/li][li]Do women lead their countries into war more often than men?[/li][li]Do matriarchal societies (ancient and modern) tend to be peaceful, or warlike?[/ul][/li]
Thank you.
Cessandra
Killed a man with no hands. . .
PS, I don’t want to start a debate on whether women or men are better leaders. I am only looking for historical statistics on whether women have gone to war or driven their countries to ruin more often than not.
I doubt it would be easy to find any statistics on it. Why not ask your friend for his/her evidence (citing sources)?
Your Official Cat Goddess since 10/20/99.
“I get along well with everybody.” --I.M.F.
Let’s see.
Gulf War: males leading both sides.
Vietnam: males.
Afganistan: males.
Rwanda: males.
WWII: males.
WWI: males.
Falkland Islands: Female on side (was that during Thatcher’s administration?)
You know, thinking back I don’t believe we have enough instances of female-dominated governments to form any kind of conclusion. The state of war seems to have been chronic during historical times and it does not matter what the sex of the person in the Big Chair was.
People is people, and people seem to like to fight.
Have your friend name his examples and demonstrate why he feels the sex of the leader is significant. I would love to hear the answers.
Or you could just point out that, historically, men leaders have created wars, driven their countries to ruin, and been generally lousy heads of state.
Like Kat, I am wondering what examples of women driving their countries to war and ruin this know-it-all friend is thinking of. I’m sure there are some. Most of the examples of women leading countries have been pretty successful.
The best example might be Elizabeth I of England. Certainly there were wars during her reign, but England came through most of them pretty well. The defeat of the Spanish Armada was a glorious victory for England and it ensure the survival of the Church of England. Generally a very successful reign with tons of exploration, new architecture, flourishing arts.
The question specific to women leading their countries into war is interesting. It takes two to have a war. I wonder if countries neighboring those led by women have often acted as aggressive as possible to take advantage of a perceived weakness. This was offered as a possible explanation for why Argentina chose to invade the Falklands a few years into the government of Britain’s first female Prime Minister. One supposes that James Callaghan and Harold Wilson were too steely-eyed and tough for the Argentines to contemplate angering them [this sentence ironically intended]. But I don’t know if woman-led countries have really gone to war any more than man-led ones.
The question about matriarchal societies is interesting. I can’t answer it, since quite frankly I don’t know exactly what a matriarchal society is. Italy is often described as having a matriarchal society, which means I really have no clue what the word means.
Have there really been enough women heads of state (or heads of government) to draw any general conclusions? In the 20th Century, excluding constitutional monarchs, I can think of:
[ul][li]Margaret Thatcher[/li][li]Indira Ghandi[/li][li]Golda Meir[/ul][/li]
Any more?
Dang, I wish I were home – I’ve got a great book titled, I think “Warrior Queens” by Antonia Fraser (again, I think it’s by her). I’ll look for it and post again when and if I find it. Queen Boudicca comes to mind immediately, of course. Some of those ancient Celtic queens were every bit as fierce warriors as their male counterparts.
-Melin
Well, just running through some famous women leaders:
Cleopatra was probably overcome by events already in motion. Her choices went sour, but not always by her error.
Catherine I of Russia continued reforms her husband (Peter the Great) had begun and certainly didn’t start any more wars than Peter had.
Catherine II of Russia was involved with more wars, but that was a continuation of the Russian policy of the preceding 150 years and hardly something she started on her own. Under C II, Russia expanded its territories considerably.
Elizabeth I of England was embroiled in already-existing conflicts with Spain and the Netherlands, but can hardly be claimed to have started those wars. During her reign, England grew both in prosperity and power.
Victoria of England hardly set policy. England continued a long tradition of warfare and conquest under her ministers, but that hardly was encouraged or impeded by her presence.
Margaret Thatcher had one small war. I think she went too far in some of her social restructuring, but much of her economic platform was necessary to escape the dismal 70’s and she can hardly be accused of ruining Britain.
(There was also a semi-legendary queen of an English tribe, whose name I cannot remember, who actually led her troops in battle. However, since she was defending her realm against an invasion, I hardly think it’s fair to mock her warlike nature.)
Catherine de Medici of France was embroiled in the religious wars of the post-Reformation and was involved in numerous power struggles in France. You might charge her with too many conflicts and “ruining” the country.
Isabella of Spain was (with her husband) inclined to warfare and conquest. She certainly did nothing to further humanitarian goals with her expulsion of the Spanish Jews and the establishment of Torquemada’s Inquisition (possibly to revoke the debt she and her husband owed Jewish fananciers for helping them “liberate” Spain from the Moors). On the other hand, from a materialistic perspective, she did not “ruin” the country and we cannot evaluate her without cnsidering her husband (who was king, after all).
Maria-Theresa of Austria was involved in several wars, but did not actually initiate any.
Elizabeth of Hungary was not involved in any wars that I remember. She was deposed for spending too much money after her husband died. Of course, since the object of her spending were the poor of her country, it just may be possible that she was deposed for spending money that her brother-in-law wanted to spend on himself.
Margaret of Denmark actually brought about the first serious unity of the Scandinavian countries through dilomacy. It was probably the force of her personality, because it fell apart at her death, but she was not particularly warlike.
Lucrezia Borgia has a pretty bad reputation (possibly much of it undeserved) because of the corruption that surrounded her–but she was never a head of state.
The nations that these women led were frequently involved in wars during their reigns. Of course, since most of them ruled at a time that the sole purpose of nations seemed to be warfare, that doesn’t exactly lend credence to the idea that they began the wars.
I’d ask your know-it-all friend to put up or shut up.
Tom~
*TomH: Have there really been enough women heads of state (or heads of government) to draw any general conclusions? In the 20th Century, excluding constitutional monarchs, I can think of:
Margaret Thatcher
Indira Ghandi
Golda Meir
Any more?*
Corazon Aquino
To TomH and AWB’s list I would add (also excluding monarchs and pre-20th Century people)
Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway
Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan
Current President of Switzerland (or maybe former; those 1-year terms make it hard to follow…)
Former Prime Minister of Canada (canya believe I forgot her name already?)
Former Prime Minister of France [blushing more deeply] (she was the one that said something like a quarter of all British men are gay)
Tansu Ciller of Turkey
Former Prime Minister of Bangladesh (don’t know nothin bout her cept she was one of three female heads of government in Moslem countries; Ciller and Bhutto being the other two)
I don’t want to make people think like me, I want them to think like me of their own free will.
Well, if we’re making a list, don’t forget:
Mary Robinson of Ireland
Chamorro of Nicaragua
Bennazir Bhutto (sp?) in Pakistan
Also, wasn’t Rajiv Ghandi’s wife elected PM after his assassination? I’ve had too little sleep too remember right now.
As an aside, how many Indian PM have NOT been killed in office?
Scott
Couldn’t let my list stand like that, so I hadda add:
Sheikh Hasina is Bangladesh’s PM (is Sheikh a woman’s name and a man’s title?)
Kim Cambell was the relevant PM of Canada
I can’t find diddly about the Babe-raham Lincoln of France. Perhaps I simply dreamed of her (Emmanuelle Beart with political power … ahh).
Check dis out or suffa the consequences (it’s highly revelant, reverent, and rentable): http://lycoskids.infoplease.com/ipka/A0768486.html
Edith Cresson! Shoulda read my above link before giving up! Read it! It’s great!
Let’s not forget the first women elected head of state by popular vote in a democracy:
Vigdis Finnbogadottir in Iceland (elected in 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992).
And yes, the president in Switzerland is a woman (until the end of 1999), Ruth Dreyfuss.
Quand les talons claquent, l’esprit se vide.
Maréchal Lyautey
Scott - I think Rajiv’s wife Sonia has been made head of the Congress party, but has never been PM. I don’t know if the Indians are prepared for an Italian as head of government.
The two women that he mentions (a lot) are Indira Ghandi and some Italian chick who may not have been the head of state exactly, but was supposedly a former prostitute. He doesn’t remember her name. What’s the story on these two?
A useful answer will not be in the form of a list, as some of these posts make clear (Good lord, if you can absolve Victoria of Britain’s aggressive military expansionism throughout her reign - most of the nineteenth century - you can excuse any female leader anything!).
I think we need (1) a measure of “war-like tendency” that crosses historical, cultural, and geographic boundaries, and (2) a statistical description of the variation in this measure under male and female leadership.
I don’t have a perfect system, but we probably make ground with an economic measure for war-like tendency: how much of a population’s wealth (e.g., their GDP) is spent on war or “defense”? (I won’t try to distinguish the two since the identity of the aggressor is so often disputed). If we looked at the average of this number under male and female heads of state it might provide some objective insight.
But the objection could be raised that nations that are traditionally martial will always spend more, no matter who the leader is. To correct for this, we would have to normalize each leader’s war spending against all the other leaders of that country (or population). There may not be enough female leaders for most countries for much of history to do this meaningfully.
So I finish with this final proposal of how to answer the question: Define some economic measure of warlike leanings on the population level, then look at the CHANGE in that measure over the, say, five years that bracket a change of leadership from one person to another. This is a short enough time scale that changes in long-term historical influences, like the rise of an aggressive neighbor, should be negligible.
Now compare the average change on going from a male to a female with the average change on going from male to male, female to male, and female to female.
I’ve never heard of this being done, but I’d be interested in the results. Any sociologists out there with more knowledge?
Oh bloody hell. He mentioned Cicciolina? I think that’s her name. She was never anything close to a head of government. As far as I know, she wasn’t really a hooker either. She was a porn star, who was active in the Radical Party, a sort of left-wing libertarian thang that has never been represented in the cabinet. She was elected to parliament. She offered at one point to spend the night with Saddam Hussein if he would peacefully end the occupation of Kuwait.
I mean, she’s kind of a weird person and all, but seems kind of harmless.
Indira Gandhi is doubtless a controversial character, so he’d have plenty to criticize in her. It’s not like the people who’ve come after her have been that much better, though.
I don’t want to make people think like me, I want them to think like me of their own free will.