Leadership Qualities
I've been cruising around the Internet checking out male blogger opinion on what leadership means to them in the Harper vs Dion vein (Layton not fitting the template, having an equally political partner and no kids, I guess) and I have to say, it's no wonder we're nowhere near having a female leader of the Liberal or New Conservative parties. Now, I'm not one to think men and women want different things in life, necessarily, but I do think we have different ways of going about things and having worked for both men and women, I'd have to say I'd rather work for women because regardless of what she's in charge of, her priority is getting everyone on board to work together to the same end.
With female politicians, that end is generally to make everything work better for more people. And that crosses the floor around the world, too, from Left to Maggie Thatcher. So, aside from a generic sexism, there's no reason for any political party to not want female leaders all the time.
Now, men don't necessarily appreciate that consensual teamwork approach, but - tough nuts. An office is no place for rugged individuality, quite frankly. Although it does work well for the rugged individualist, who is generally left alone to pursue his goal of indulging his private passions on the job and staying clear of any actual office-related work load. And certainly politics, home of the prima donna if you're male, is the last place women are successful because pretty much the last thing backroom boys et al want is a change in routine.
I mean, think about it. Why would any voter take seriously any male politician who talks about family values except that voters have been conditioned to think male politicians care about family values? There's no profession in which fathers have less contact with their families than politics. Wives and children are props, the voter is all, and since we know that the more a male politician talks about family values the more likely he is to be having a homosexual affair with a prostitute, why do we take the family values speechifying seriously?
And yet we do. Or the media does, anyway. So with regards to leadership, why are we pretending Harper OR Dion are leaders when all they did was win the leadership of their own political parties, neither of which are models of anything except manipulation and deceit, and teamwork is nowhere to be seen?
Because political leadership is still viewed through a male lens and since women aren't men, they won't ever be seen as having the qualities necessary to lead. And we'll continue to elect people who don't really make things better for anybody because it's all about being seen to lead a political party as opposed to actually leading the country by bringing everybody on board.
