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Would more woman power in the White House have brought us close to peace on earth and good will towards all?
Who knows? Especially during Women's History Month we should speculate. Maybe we cannot get all the way there right now but perhaps we can get closer if women were in charge. Closer to what? Well. . .studies have shown that women are less violent than men. They commit fewer murders. Generally, with all exceptions admitted, women are more nurturing, more caring, and less individualistic,
Feminists might jump all over me for saying it; and having been father to both a son and daughter, I had to scratch my head in wonderment many times in the past, but my gut feeling is that things might be more peaceful if women ruled.
There is that study in the American Journal of Political Science, "The Jackie (and Jill) Robinson Effect: Why Do Congresswomen Outperform Congressmen?" The conclusion reached was women outperform men in Congress because all their lives they've had to work harder to win success so they are harder workers.
I read the study hoping to find statistics to support my gut feeling. But Stanford University researcher, Sarah Anzia, and the other primary author of the study, Christopher Berry of The University of Chicago, did not speculate that women might be better lawmakers because of temperament.
With no statistics to back it up it seems to me that women compromise more readily. I was reading the study looking for stuff like: women form groups without the groups becoming gangs as often. They are less ego-driven.
Perhaps the best fuel for pleasant Women's History Month speculation I found by looking at the Goddess cultures that, according to historians, existed from 8000 to 3000 year ago. In those cultures both men and women worshipped the Great Mother.
This worship involved prayers and offerings to the earth, to rain, to thunder and to fertility in the yearly cycle of vegetation. The Queen of Heaven was a general title given in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. In history books more specific titles were also given, like Innana or Astarte.
In preparation for a possible Hillary Clinton victory in the 2008 Democratic primaries I did some speculative thinking; and I started reading books like the one my son gave me, When God Was a Woman by Merlin Stone. Perhaps my son was sick of patriarchy too.
I read about the Goddess in the 44th chapter, 18th verse of Jeremiah in the King James Bible. ""But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine."
Okay, maybe my gut feeling was accurate. The Bible said so. I got the best support for the feeling from the writings of the Biblical scholar, Margaret Barker: ". . . so deep were her (the Queen of Heaven's) roots in Israel's religion that her loss was never forgotten; on the contrary, her restoration was to be a sign of redemption."
I fired off an email to Barker: "I have read some of your Biblical scholarship and am very interested if you have made any public speculations on how the world might be different if Hillary Clinton had been elected President of the United States. Would the world have moved closer to redemption"?
In less than a half-hour I got a reply: "Thank you for writing, and what an interesting question. The short answer is that I do not really do politics even here in UK, and the US is way beyond me! But I do think that women think and act, when allowed to do so, in totally different ways from men, and so their politics is bound to be different. It will take several generations to restore the human intellectual scene to being a two-parent family."
True. . .in the 21st century we are still consumed by the sword and much of the world is engulfed in famine. We are still waiting to be redeemed from the excesses of patriarchy by a balancing wisdom. However, a Marxist-feminist friend asked me: "When has wisdom ever not been dominated and suppressed by power. Women must first gain power."
Certainly there has been a steady march toward more power for women on earth. In the last 100 years ( after about 5000 years of patriarchy) there have been nearly a hundred women heads of state -some of them very powerful states-Britain, India, Israel, Pakistan, Canada, and Germany.
Although America ranks only 31st among the 128 nations on the Gender Equality Index, a woman, Nancy Pelosi, was recently considered the 2nd most powerful elected official in America. And of course, Hillary Clinton came within a few hairs of becoming the most powerful human on earth.
In October 2008 The Washington Post reported: "On a continent that has been dominated by the rule of men, this tiny East African nation (Rwanda) is trying something new. Women hold a third of all cabinet positions, including foreign minister, education minister, Supreme Court chief and police commissioner general. And Rwanda's parliament last month became the first in the world where women claim the majority -- 56 percent, including the speaker's chair.
Comments on this story at Washingtonpost.com give an indication of what many people think about this situation.
Great Article! I hope now that these women are in the majority that this will allow them to address the issues that have been placed on the back burner for so long.
This is the most encouraging information I have read about the progress of the human race.
After reading the comments, I felt more like celebrating Women's History Month..
THE END
From the book, Barack Obama, America, and the World by George Davis
