Author Topic: Are Women Better at Leading Diverse Countries Than Men?  (Read 445 times)

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Offline Queefer Sutherland

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From my read of their paper in the Harvard Business Review link posted, it looks like they've done a very thorough job.

It's an interesting theory and the evidence shows that it is promising to explore further the differences and outcomes of male vs female leaders, especially in these diverse countries and often developing economies. I skimmed through the article but didn't read the whole study, so i'm not going to draw conclusions on the study, other than to say it's an interesting topic worthy of research.


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I think this quote re Liberia is particularly revealing:

At the beginning of her second term, President Johnson Sirleaf reconstituted her cabinet further to reflect the age, gender, religion, and ethnicity ranges in the country. These strategies based on representative diversity were associated with an average annual 4% GDP growth rate in her first five years in office (2006–2010), as compared with the 1% growth of her predecessor, President Charles Taylor, in his last five years (1999–2003). Her agenda differed from her male predecessors’, particularly that of former President Samuel Doe (1986–1990), who was known for favoring his ethnic group, the Krahns, which ultimately sparked a rebellion against him. Her male counterparts’ agendas were not about the unification of the country’s various groups, but instead were about grabbing resources for their favored group.

Among other things, I studied conflict and development in Africa in university. Charles Taylor is an evil man and a bastard warlord charged with crimes against humanity and sent to the Hague, guilty of ****, murder, terrorism etc. and just about every other disgusting thing one can think of.  Not hard to do better than he did haha. But men tend to behave more violently than women generally, so it's worth looking into how this may affect leadership behaviour and outcomes, and how internal conflicts such as civil wars in Liberia and other African countries might be influenced by gender of leadership.

It's really hard to isolate variables to explain things like economic outcomes, there's so many factors that go into ie: GDP growth, especially in these diverse & complex developing countries.  That's why we have to be extremely careful in making conclusions about correlation vs causation.  The authors acknowledged this distinction to their credit:

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Let us be clear: This strong correlation does not guarantee women will always be successful and our research does not establish a causal relationship. Some might argue that our results are due to special circumstances in diverse countries that made it possible for women leaders to emerge or that women leaders are simply benefiting from economies that were bound to rebound. However, there is reason to believe that these female heads of state actually led their diverse countries differently than their male counterparts. Both explanations could be at play. The important takeaway here is that female leaders are associated with economic outcomes that suggest that they may be better able to unlock the benefits of diversity at the country level than their male counterparts.

So your statement...

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Women serve their people and their country..
Men serve themselves and their cronies.
Too harsh?
Let me put it another way: Men serve and maintain the patriarchal crony system. Women have no allegiance nor subservience to the patriarchal system.
GDP seems to like it.

You're making broad over-generalizations, and also making causal relationships that aren't proven in the research as the authors admit.  Such over-generalizing statements about men and women aren't helpful either because, frankly, that language is sexist & divisive, and would just make some males, including some academics, PO'd because it doesn't apply to all men or all women.  A more accurate thing to say would be:  data suggests it could be true that more female than male leaders tend to lead less divisively, which may improve economic outcomes for those countries.
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