What a great response to Salam bullshit.

There are some obvious problems with this line of reasoning, not least of which is calling the housing bubble -- a phenomenon that resulted from the failure of mortgage-backed securities and the subsequent credit crisis -- a "policy."

Since no one in a position of power seemed to understand the shadow banking industry with its different products that someone or some group was able to manipulate all of these different tools to empower only men is ridiculous on its face.

Then, too, it's possible to argue that the inflation in the housing sector also served to "prop up" women, since, at least for a time, more women were able to afford their own homes.

Don't forgot his thesis would also suggest if women where in charge women would not have used credit cards and made smart financial decisions as a whole. And it was men that force women to be the vast majority of consumer spending.

While I'm certainly in favor of the advancement of women, Salam's assumptions, and the ideas about gender in which they're rooted, are essentialist and problematic. Men are aggressive, seeking and taking risks, and women are ... what? The domesticated opposite? Salam doesn't say. But his article assumes that women (and the mysterious qualities they possess) will nevertheless reign supreme.

Are we to believe that in this forthcoming female-run world, where women form, say, the majority of the U.S. Senate, the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and the partner class at law firms and on Wall Street, they will behave the same as when they filled the ranks of the service industries? Does it make sense to predict that women with power will act the same as women without? Or that men, shorn of their power, must either get with the revolution by neutering themselves, or roam around pissed-off and drunk? Isn't this -- to charge Salam with the crime often committed by feminist scholars -- reductive and overly "gendered"? Perhaps it's not men who are innately aggressive risk-takers; perhaps the institutions themselves engender these qualities. There have certainly been plenty of female leaders who have exhibited aggression and swagger; think of Margaret Thatcher, or Indira Gandhi, or Golda Meir. If women do eventually run the world, as Salam suggests, will the world change, or will running the world change women?

This is the smartest bit of writing in broadsheet history and hope for more of it. Real reasoned based on historic evidence and no blaming of genders for institutions.

Carly Fiorina alone is the counter argument that women posses some magical property that will change corporate America to from a hyper aggressive culture to a culture of love peace and understanding. Under male leadership prior to her arrival family like atmosphere was used constantly to describe the companies culture when she got there cut throat became the new buzz word to describe the place.

But this line "Perhaps it's not men who are innately aggressive risk-takers; perhaps the institutions themselves engender these qualities." is brilliant. One of my biggest issues with feminism is patriarchy theory and the single biggest issue comes down to that one line you wrote. It assumes that men set up the game for the benefit of men when in reality all systems that deal with limited resources end up requiring aggression from evolution to shoe pricing.

And as for Salaam's assumption that women aren't aggressive or daring, well there's only one word for it, isn't there? Macho.

Exactly. You are a breath of much needed fresh air on broadsheet please keep up the great work.

After the Soviet collapse, the ideal of women’s equality was abandoned almost entirely, and many Russians revived the cult of the full-time homemaker (with Putin’s government even offering bonus payments for childbearing women).

Genius, the reason Russia has to give payments to childbearing women is because Russia desperately needs people to reproduce. There population is shrinking by 700,000 people a year or two icelands. This is a mid and long term disaster to their economy. Without these payments there will be no Russia for anyone to work in.

If this represents a nightmare scenario for how the death of macho could play out, another kind of threatening situation is unfolding in China. The country’s $596 billion economic stimulus package bears a far stronger resemblance to a New Deal-style public-works program than anything the U.S. Democratic Party has devised. Whereas healthcare and education have attracted the bulk of U.S. stimulus dollars, more than 90 percent of the Chinese stimulus is going to construction: of low-income homes, highways, railroads, dams, sewage-treatment plants, electricity grids, airports, and much else.

This is seriously the most retarded argument I have ever seen. All one has to do is look at history to see infrastructure is what creates wealth and a higher quality of life for all. China will be about a billion times better off for spending money on such meaningless macho things like clean water and electric grids. Getting back to the knowledge economy it still has yet to be shown to actual create wealth on the large scale like industry has. The net manufacturing exporters have done better in the current economy than service economies.