And Ignition

So someone posted this screenshot from X on LinkedIn this afternoon.

Cue the flame war in the comments.

Big picture, I think that Grace has a point, even if the presentation is a bit hostile. The long-standing double-standard around gender roles and emotionality is stupid. (Come to think if it, I'm curious what the response on X was... I wonder how many people decided that Grace was being too emotional about the situation.) It was pretty clear that at least some of the critics of the reposting of this to LinkedIn objected because they felt their politics were being called out... it doesn't take a particularly deep interest in current affairs for two names to come immediately to mind, even though none are mentioned.

But I've always wondered, given that the effects of testosterone on the world are fairly well understood, why there are so few women business and political leaders. It certainly can't be for want of ambition... I've worked for any number of companies with women in high-ranking positions. Maybe the stereotypes that push back against women in places of highly-visible authority are more deeply ingrained than one might suspect.

The answer might be, however, that women are simply less partisan about this sort of thing than men are, and that works against them. After all, if women are more likely to support the best person for a job, while men are more likely to look for the best man, that serves to put women at a disadvantage.

Or it might simply be that as long as leadership is considered a man's domain, the problem isn't that women are considered "too emotional;" is that they are considered too collaborative. After all, a lot of people voted for President Trump because they saw him as aggressive (even though there wasn't much call for it) and a willingness to take big risks is often seen as a plus in an CEO, and there's been some research into the idea that people who take big risks in one area of their lives are likely to take them in others.

Either way, the online arguing about it is going to continue. Because flaming one another in the comments section of someone's post is always going to feel more rewarding than working towards a solution, regardless of what people think that solution is.