This provocative statement of Barack Obama made many headlines today (this one from CNBC), and the article below gives some data showing that women excel in several measures of leadership.
A quick summary:
A recent Gallup Poll found that when it comes to bosses, Americans . As women continue striving for representation as leaders, former U.S. President Barack Obama recently shared a message heard around the world: More women need to be put in positions of power “because men seem to be having some problems these days,” he said at an invitation-only event in Paris Saturday, AFP reports.
“Not to generalize but women seem to have a better capacity than men do, partly because of their socialization,” Obama said.
. . . Although Obama didn’t mention any particular male leaders who are currently having problems, he did speak of “the importance of more focus on putting women in power, because men seem to be having some problems these days.”
It turns out that surveys of leaders show that they consider women generally better than men as leaders, and the article above give measure of “leadership competencies” from psychometric data showing that on virtually every criteria, women score higher than men.
CBS News adds some of Obama’s other remarks:
“Now women, I just want you to know, you are not perfect, but what I can say pretty indisputably is that you’re better than us,” Mr. Obama said during a speech at a private event in Singapore, according to BBC News.
The former president, who left office in January 2017, added that if women ran every nation in the world, there would be “significant improvements across the board on just about everything.”
“If you look at the world and look at the problems, it’s usually old people, usually old men, not getting out of the way,” Mr. Obama said.
Ageism as well! Did Obama know the data when he made these remarks, or was he seeking approbation?
So Obama may be right on average. But I have three plaints:
1.) If a man said that all women leaders should be replaced, he would be considered an overgeneralizing sexist, but it’s politically okay to single out the female sex as the choice to run every nation in the world.
2.) There must be considerable overlap in leadership talents, so it’s not quite fair to claim that, among all the diverse nations of the world with all their diverse problems, women should run every country. Psychometric skills may be a good average measure, but in particular cases, well, they’re particular cases.
3.) Note that this is an admission that women do have different skills and abilities from men, and in fact superior leadership skills. I’ve always maintained that men and women have different behaviors, some of them evolved, but pointing out inherent differences between men and women is an ideological no-no these days. Yet Obama gets away with it because he’s Obama.
4.) Obama says women excel “partly” because of their socialization (which of course is the ideologically correct way to pinpoint the cause of any differences), but “partly” implies that the other parts might be innate—that is, genetic. That, too, is an ideological no-no these days. Obama would have been better off saying “it’s all due to socialization”!
I don’t care much one way or the other about his remarks, but the approbation with which they’ve been received is remarkable; and I suspect there would be the same approbation without any of the psychometric data. My own view is that men and women should get equal opportunities for leadership, which they don’t always have, and then people should vote for the best person. There’s something off-putting, at least to me, in saying that we should simply #ReplaceAllMen. But of course I’m an old male, and, if you consider Jews white, then I’m white as well.
Reblogged this on The Logical Place and commented:
Relevance deprivation syndrome?
Dear Mr. Obama.
Stop judging in the plural.
I always have to remind my students that data are plural 🙂
A rather silly generalization by Obama. Here in the UK we’ve had two female prime ministers and I can’t say there was any noticeable improvement! That said, the situation in Finland might prove interesting.
Yes, as long as her name ain’t Maggie, same as the honorary alpha male.
What is your evaluation of (what if any) improvement of Parliament?
“Here in the UK we’ve had two female prime ministers…”
Is your objection to Thatcher because she was an “effective Tory leader” (thus many people on the left hate her) or that she was incompetent?
(I assume most people would agree that May was somewhat incompetent)
I do not know much about Thatcher, thus the question, what do you think about her objectively?
Best candidate male or female.
I love Obama, but these comments…hmm….Perhaps he was trying to counter his comments from a few weeks ago when he criticized the rise of the woke. I don’t know. I’m planning to vote for his 77-year-old, white, male vice president, so I guess I don’t think things are quite so simple as women = good, men = bad.
Which is one of the woke dogma that Murray identifies in The Madness of Crowds: Women are exactly the same as men … soto voce except they are actually better.
As he notes: Self-contradictory.
Good observation! Biden must be thinking ‘thanks for that, Barack.’ What an idiotic statement by Obama. Warren must be thinking she just got an endorsement but it’s hard to tell if Barack’s ageism includes old women whose amazing leadership qualities may not be quite as sharp as when they were younger.
As much as I admire the man, Obama is no stranger to virtue signaling. Had he intended to address quality of a leadership, he would have been more about merit, but as his words indicate, these days it’s all about genitals
I’m not particularly surprised. I don’t think it’s biological though; I think our societies are still sexist enough that any woman rising to the top is likely to be more competent, more of an effective leader, and more of a good negotiator than the men around her. What was it Michelle Obama said? Something like women have to work twice as hard to get half as far? If something like that were even partially true, it would explain this result all on it’s own.
“I think our societies are still sexist enough that any woman rising to the top is likely to be more competent”
That might be true in countries with traditonal sex roles.
However, the tendency of the left to demand or enforce 50/50 gender ratios in liberal countries might have the opposite effect.
It is OK to call out differences between men and women as long as the difference is that women are better than men.
Indeed, just peruse the anti-male sexist comments, cartoons, etc. on FB and elsewhere.
(Oh, man, have I been tempted to invert the pronouns and reply. Haven’t done it yet.)
But that’s of a piece with wokeness: It’s punching up so it’s fine and: not sexist, by definition.
The worst boss I ever worked for was a woman – and the best boss I ever worked for was a woman.
Just a (true) anecdote perhaps showing that individuals shouldn’t be judged by a single characteristic.
I too have a certain amount of time for Obama, although I do think he didn’t take anything like all the opportunities afforded by his Presidency that he might have done.
But this is too sweeping. What if he had said that young people make better leaders than old, or indeed vice versa? And what if he (or anyone else) should be tempted to make judgements about leadership based on any other binary differences?
He DID say that;
There’s no way to sanitize these comments – I hope he walks them back.
Why in the world would he walk them back? He’s not running for anything.
Even if the best leaders are women, it does not mean that all women are good leaders. Nor does it mean that the percentage of good leaders among women is higher than among men.
At first I was happy with what Obama said. Intuitively, I think of women as less copetative and less hot headed. Then, I reflected on how GOP women in congress seem just as idiotic in support of tTrump as the men. At least none have opposed him publicly, that I know of. Now, I’m thinking…er, maybe not the women so much.
Be very careful characterizing “women.” We are individuals first and foremost.
I know.
What everyone seems to be forgetting is that the same calls were made in the 60s, the mantra then was ‘Put women in charge and there will be no more wars’…
Tell that to Indira Ghandi, Golda Meir & Margaret Thatcher…
“if you consider Jews white, then I’m white as well.”
This a point of some puzzlement in the UK where we have BAME–Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic. Are Jews in or out? No one seems to know. Even in the Jewish press there is debate about inclusion or not.
To me it seems arguable that, considering the age of the diaspora and the coherence of Jewish groups over that time, Jews have a claim to be something like the Original Minority Ethnic.
The disadvantage in including them to those Woke is that every time someone BAME (read Black/Brown/Non-White) is claimed to be The First, quite likely someone Jewish has already done that.
Here is one list of the achievements of prominent British Jews: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_Jews
I have no problem with anything Obama said here, in the given context. I’m a bit surprised that so many males here are so negative about it. It’s getting to where no one can make a positive comment about women at any expense to men without males everywhere taking offense.
And, my friend, it’s also getting so that nobody can make a positive comment about men at any expense to women without women everywhere taking offense.
It’s not the approbation of women; it’s the assertion that they are innately superior to men, which is exactly as offensive as the claim that men are superior to women.
I see no offence in suggesting that one sex is better–‘superior’, if you like–than the other, in certain domains. That, surely, is an empirical matter.
‘Leadership’? Well, it is poorly defined. Plus we haven’t done the experiment much when it comes to women running countries. Or large companies.
Jordan Peterson, with his clinical experience of high flying women lawyers, claims they are simply less willing to endure the 100 hr weeks and lack of work/life balance it takes to get to the top. I am inclined to believe him.
Further, in domains such as theoretical physics, advanced mathematics, chess, etc., men far outnumber women. The IQ curve predicts this. And this (more men at either end of the curve): there are far more homeless men than women living on the streets. George Orwell observed this long ago in ‘Down and Out in London and Paris’.
Finally, are there grounds for believing that women are more innately nurturing than men? Surely there are. We are mammals. Any mammal pup inadequately nurtured by Mum is less likely to survive. Or do I have that wrong?
+1
Let’s concede for arguments sake that men have greater variability in IQ than women, so there are more males at the far extreme of the IQ curve.
Since when has genius-level IQ made for a good leader, manager or politician? Would you want Richard Feynman running your sales division or your human resources department? No, crusty geniuses should stick to getting the Noble Prize or the Field’s Medal, and leave the 120-125’s to positions of leadership which rely upon human relationship skills and networking.
Also, men in general are lower in agreeableness, meaning they behave more like douche bags, and being a douche bag often correlates with rising to the top (hence the over-representation of anti-social personalities in positions of leadership). However, high douche-bag personalities, while good at climbing the greasy pole, don’t generally have a high commitment to promoting the common good. In fact, its not hard to find a good example.
“If you look at the world and look at the problems, it’s usually old people, usually old men, not getting out of the way,” Mr. Obama said.
Did Obama just pwn Biden?
Of COURSE we should.
I think the awful truth outlined in Obama’s comment is that in a post-industrial world, where brawn has been replaced by machines, and employment is largely in offices or commercial settings, women often make better and more reliable employees, managers and leaders.
If men don’t like it, well, man up!
Right or wrong, this is the kind of thing that Obama and other Dems should shut up about. Clearly there is massive overlap in the “leadership qualities” distributions, as well uncertainty that such a thing could be measured accurately. It doesn’t really help a voter reach a decision on who to vote for, or shouldn’t anyway. At best it says that if you had two candidates that were equal in every way bar their sex, one should vote for the woman.
Shucks, I think Barry meant his remarks merely as a pep talk for the half of the population that’s now grossly underrepresented in positions of power.
No harm in that.
That was my take as well.
It isn’t surprising given that both men and women tend to demonstrate a more favourable impression of women than men in general. Gynocentrism seems like an almost unbreakable phenomenon.
Sub
I doubt that Obama has any better idea of this than the averhage person so I am not so concerned about is thoughts on the subject. However, just looking around at this particular country and noticing the direction it has gone, I think a big change would be in order. Also, considering the last 45 presidents have all been men it just about has to be a good idea to change this executive.
Real leadership is something we seldom get in a president and we have had none that I would consider since the early 60s. FDR was the last really good leader and he grew with the job. Good leaders in the military are also hard to find. The problem these days is, when we see poor leadership nothing is done. The last time top leadership in the military was fired and replaced with any regularity was WWII. The guy that did the firing was Marshall. He replaced generals often and considered it part of his job. Many people promoted to top levels during the war just don’t cut it and the only proper thing to do is remove and replace. War does not wait long for a learning curve to take place.
I would say that Trump is such a poor excuse for a leader, he does not even register on the graph. In fact, if you were teaching a course in leadership, he could always be your example of what not to be. The only inspiration he could provide would be to a low level crook to move up the ladder.
Obama is just exercising his right to speak his mind. And it happens I agree with him. I would sleep better if more world leaders were women. We need more Angela Merkels.
I remember seeing a comedian on tv whose routine included: “No woman leader has ever gone to war.”
Then someone pointed out Margaret Thatcher.
Then someone pointed out Indira Ghandi
Then someone pointed out…
“Oh that’s right, they all have.”
On the other hand, I seem to recall that Iceland kicked out their male bankers, and ensures that several woman are on the Board of Directors in major companies. It seems that woman are less likely to make the impulsive and reckless decisions that many men tend to make in competitive situations.
“It seems that woman are less likely to make the impulsive and reckless decisions that many men tend to make in competitive situations.”
One name is a rebuttal to that – Elisabeth Holmes. Of course, she may be an outlier. But I doubt it.
In all fairness, did Thatcher have a choice? Argentina invaded British territory. It’s not like she went to war on a whim. I think we should expect a leader of any gender to defend the realm.
The dissolution of religion doesn’t require leadership just a ground roots effort.
Women have been hurt more by religion than any other group. Why haven’t women abolished religion, at least, in Western societies? It is not to the advantage of (some) men to abolish religion as it clearly gives them a slight to significant advantage over women.
I think women do make better leaders than men, but their collective inability to rid us of religion makes me have less confidence in their ability to be necessarily be better at leading our civilization.
And then there is war. If every women on the planet were collectively against war, I would think there would be merit to the leadership qualities being better than those of men, but there are enough women who appear not to have any problem with sending troops into battle.
Well, he didn’t say “replace all men.” It was, … More women need to be put in positions of power. I wholeheartedly agree.
Obama’s smart enough to use a generalization for effect and not think it applies to all individuals. Are we?
History does not favor Mr. Obama’s thesis. For every wise queen like Margaret 1 of Denmark (who brought about the Kalmar Union), we have zealots like Bloody Mary Tudor. As for the idea that female leaders are less scheming and competitive, take a look at the history of Russia’s Catherine the Great.
… whereas the track record of male leaders/rulers has been markedly superior, on average.
No, wait….
I’m not sure embarking on that comparison is going to result in a victory for either side.
😎
cr
We should try more women in power. Hopefully they would be less inclined to get us into stupid useless wars like Vietnam, Iraq 2 and Afghanistan. This would be a much needed experiment. I’m not convinced that Hilary would been better with regard to military action, but she would have been infinitely more prepared, stable and competent as well as far less self involved and criminally inclined than Trump.
WEIT has some good penis posts and comments. Some of the best. sample here.
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/geographic-variation-in-human-penis-size/
Damn, I got caught in this post and then read Grania. Missed as shit and others who have come and gone. The ‘Holidays’ leave me feeling morose.
Post is from 2011…I read so many who don’t post no more…Kukec and Fisher still remain at the end. I know there are others long-time contributors, but those names stood out. Love this site.
I miss Ben Goren, who sadly for us but happily for him, got a life 🙂
When it takes a more exceptional woman to rise to the top, women leaders will on average be more exceptional.
I look at South African politics, and we’ve had great women like Thuli Madonsela, and terrible women like Manto Tshabalala Msimang. It seems to follow the same arc in roughly the same proportions as male leaders.
The more interesting thing here is – Obama has refused to endorse Biden so far, is this is a stealth endorsement of Warren?
I understand is at such, also a dig at Bernie Sanders. Democrat elites want to prevent Sanders in particular. It’s not that he is too left wing, but they are too right wing and in love with the big money flowing their way, too.
The only thing I can say from experience is that in the last couple decades, female leaders who try to emulate what they consider essential elements of male leadership (overt, in-your-face overconfident alpha male characteristics), make terrible, terrible leaders. I know this because I’ve suffered under them. It’s like the ingredients that make that horrible in male leaders make it doubly horrible in women.
The only advice I give is that people must be themselves, not follow stereotypical prescriptions for anything. I think men and women will perform more or less equally.
Does it follow you love Justin Trudeau and despise Margaret Thatcher? 🙂
Perhaps we need leaders with the ability to be both aggressive and compassionate depending on the situation.
If Germany were run by women in the 1930’s we might not have had the Nazi menace.
However, I think men are better suited to oppose the Nazi’s!
As far as “only women” thoughts go, I’ve long thought that only women should be allowed to own guns. I think that would go a long way to improving life in the US. Domestic abuse, mass killings, so many problems would diminish.
“..only women should be allowed to own guns”
Why not nobody, assuming you refer to the general public?
Women need them to keep men in line.
This is a much a projection of privilege as a projection of virtue.
Any white male who says that he is an inferior leader simply because of his gender should just step down from his position of responsibility and give it to a woman immediately. But they never do that, do they?
I would at least like to see one of these woke men put their money where their mouth is.
Also…my comment applies to any powerful male, regardless of race…
I don’t think Obama believes a word of it.
He has daughters, an experience that should dispel any notion that women are all about empathy and cooperation.
There are plenty of examples of great female leaders, but their sex does not I think, only provide them with advantages.