Letters to the Editor

• How do women rule?.....Just like men

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  How Do Women Rule?...Just Like Men

  by Christine Stolba

  12/1/2001

  "New archeological evidence shows Boadicea, the warrior queen who led the Britons in revolt against the Romans, in a very different light: as a calculating, vengeful and brutal military leader, who methodically razed cities." -- The Observer, December 3, 2000

  "Can we bring ourselves to recognize our common interest as women and wield power on the basis of it?" feminist and former Dukakis campaign manager Susan Estrich asks in her new book, Sex & Power. And how might women exercise power? Women, Estrich chirps, "talk less, and let others talk more; listen more, exercising influence and wielding power indirectly...the discussion is more open; and conflicting views are more often and more readily voiced."

  Who’s she kidding? History abounds with sagas of powerful women who did not let others talk more, weren’t good listeners, and didn’t particularly relish the open exchange of conflicting views -- who were, in short, as manly, if not more so, than men.

  Want to raze a village? Boadicea, England’s warrior queen, was just the gal to get the job done. A revered figure and a sentimental favorite of Victorian painters, Boadicea is commemorated by a statue that stands on Westminster Bridge, near the Houses of Parliament. She is remembered for her bravery in leading a revolt against her country’s occupiers, the Romans, in 60 A.D. Alas, recent discoveries at an archeological dig near Colchester -- a town seized and destroyed by Boadicea -- led dig director Philip Crummy to compare Boadicea’s program and tactics to "ethnic cleansing" in the Balkans.

  Boadicea’s brutality was noteworthy, even by the standards of her era. A dismayed Crummy marveled to the Observer: "These were not flammable buildings. But they were leveled. It was a murderous, determined, intensive, and deliberate attack." Historians estimate that 70,000 Romans and their "collaborators" perished before the Roman general Paulinus’ legions caught up with Boadicea’s rebel force. Rallying her soldiers from her chariot, Boadicea fought on against the superior Roman army. Once surrounded, she drank poison rather than surrender.

  Nor did Boadicea’s distaff descendants shy away from violent displays of power. Mary Tudor, the daughter of Henry VIII, didn’t earn the sobriquet "Bloody Mary" by listening to conflicting views. Perhaps no female figure has better understood power and how to keep it than Mary Tudor’s sister, Queen Elizabeth I. During her reign (1558-1603), England became a great power with a prosperous economy and the beginnings of a colonial empire. Elizabeth, who was known to relish a good bear-baiting, evinced a genius for diplomacy, often using the lure of marriage to reel in foreign allies. Elizabeth was not, however, particularly gifted at recognizing her common interest with other women: In 1587 she ordered the beheading of the charming and clever Mary Queen of Scots. (Apparently Mary also lacked the ability to recognize a common interest with other women -- she had been involved in a plot to murder Elizabeth and seize the English throne.)

  Women across the Channel were equally tough. Catherine de’ Medici, the queen consort of Henry II of France, helped plan, and convinced a reluctant Charles IX to carry out the bloody Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre of France’s Protestants in 1572, an event that triggered a resumption of the Wars of Religion.

  A modern leader both Boadicea and Elizabeth likely would have admired was Margaret Thatcher. During her tenure as the longest-serving British prime minister of the twentieth century, Thatcher launched the Falklands War. She maintained a steely posture during the waning days of the Cold War and pursued an unwavering path of free market expansion...Throughout history women have also not been above deploying a finely calibrated combination of feminine wiles and old-fashioned politicking to exercise power behind the scenes. One exemplar was the eleventh century’s Lady Godiva, the wife of Leofric, earl of Mercia. When Leofric refused to heed her entreaties to lower the region’s heavy tax burden, Godiva rode naked through the town of Coventry in protest.

  Despite the lessons of history, flaky models of cooperative power-sharing (not to mention the introduction of ugly neologisms such as "womanpower," which has found its way into the American Heritage Dictionary) remain popular with feminists. Feminist theorist Kathleen Jones, for example, proposes in her book Compassionate Authority that women should use power to create more cooperative and compassionate models of governing. Rather than pursuing power to dominate, she says, women should be trying to construct a "woman-friendly" concept of authority...One wonders where that altruistic urge was when Boadicea was slaughtering Romans....In contemporary Bangladesh, for example, Sheik Hasina, the daughter of the country’s first president, and Khaleda Zia, widow of another former president are locked in a bitter power struggle. Their arch-rivalry is the cause of national paralysis; the legislature remains deadlocked while their feud rages on. In Sri Lanka, where Sirimavo Bandaranaike became the first woman prime minister in 1960, the political matriarchy now run by Bandaranaike’s daughter (president Chandrika Kumaratunga) is plagued by allegations of corruption.

  Like Thatcher, Indira Gandhi was a leader who understood power -- and so ruled like a man. She favored an authoritarian over a cooperative ruling style after becoming prime minister in 1966. Though she was called the "Mother of India," Gandhi did not hesitate to pursue rather unmotherly activities such as intervening in Pakistan’s civil war and bringing India into the nuclear age by acquiring atomic weapons. When opposition to her government increased in 1975, she responded by suspending civil liberties and jailing her opponents....

  This is not the kind of power that contemporary feminists admire. Feminists such as Susan Estrich believe that women share a common set of interests that can and should be transformed into united political action to achieve power. Why, she says, do we "act singly, when our greatest power would come from collective action?".......

  Permalink Wednesday, July 4, 2007 03:44 AM