Hillary Clinton 2012: Because Women Make Better Leaders During a Crisis
A few months ago, as you'll recall, Rob hypothesized that Hillary Clinton will announce her intention to challenge Obama for the Democrat Party's nomination in 2012 sometime next summer. As supporting data points for his conjecture, Rob pointed to polls that showed Hillary Clinton's approval rating at 10 to 15 points above President Obama's.
Since then, not only has the gap in approval ratings continued to widen -- Clinton now polls at 66 percent approval, while Obama has fallen to the low 40 percent range -- but the country seems to have fallen deeper into crisis, rendering null the promises of hope and change. Which is great news for Hillary. The Wall Street Journal reports on a new study in the British Journal of Social Psychology:
Times of crises change what people look for in a leader. And men don't fit the bill. A new study explores a phenomenon called the "glass cliff," in which female leadership becomes more desirable during times of uncertainty. Previous research has found that when women attain leadership positions, they are more likely to be asked to take over organizations in crisis.
Researchers gave test groups information about fictitious companies, some of which were in crises. They found that women were more likely to be selected than men if the company was struggling. The reason seemed to be that stereotypically female characteristics were suddenly valued when everything went to pot: interpersonal qualities such as being "intuitive" or "aware of the feelings of others."
Women are perceived as being better leaders during times of crisis. And we certainly have plenty of examples of women making great leaders during crises.
Consider that data point #3 in support of Rob's speculation.
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Jun '10
Re: Hillary Clinton 2012: Because Women Make Better Leaders During a Crisis
Maybe we should define crisis. If you mean persons sitting around a board table spitting tacks, perhaps. If you mean bullets flying, maybe not.
May '10
Re: Hillary Clinton 2012: Because Women Make Better Leaders During a Crisis
I'm with Cas. What sort of crisis? I am not sure a bad bottom line is the same as a terrorist attack.
Jul '10
Re: Hillary Clinton 2012: Because Women Make Better Leaders During a Crisis
..."aware of the feelings of others[?]" That's quite possibly the last "quality" of a leader to be considered. I think We should expect positive results by a leader despite everyone else's "feelings."
Hillary may be ahead in the polls because she is behind in the exposure.
Re: Hillary Clinton 2012: Because Women Make Better Leaders During a Crisis
Cas Balicki: Maybe we should define crisis. If you mean persons sitting around a board table spitting tacks, perhaps. If you mean bullets flying, maybe not. · Sep 27 at 3:53pm
I think the type of crisis discussed in the article is organizational crisis -- a company (or government) that's going under due to mismanagement, etc.
The study doesn't seem to discuss perceptions of women in the specific context of war, but don't forget that Margaret Thatcher won the Falklands War, despite the skepticism of the experts who claimed that British victory was unachievable.
Jun '10
Re: Hillary Clinton 2012: Because Women Make Better Leaders During a Crisis
Diane Ellis, Ed.
I think the type of crisis discussed in the article is organizational crisis -- a company (or government) that's going under due to mismanagement, etc.
The study doesn't seem to discuss perceptions of women in the specific context of war, but don't forget that Margaret Thatcher won the Falklands War, despite the skepticism of the experts who claimed that British victory was unachievable. · Sep 27 at 4:07pm
Maggie Thatcher won the Falklands war by having warriors draw up and then execute a battle plan while she discussed how to budget for the ammo. They also serve who sit and wait, I guess.
Jul '10
Re: Hillary Clinton 2012: Because Women Make Better Leaders During a Crisis
Diane Ellis, Ed.
Cas Balicki: Maybe we should define crisis. If you mean persons sitting around a board table spitting tacks, perhaps. If you mean bullets flying, maybe not. · Sep 27 at 3:53pm
I think the type of crisis discussed in the article is organizational crisis -- a company (or government) that's going under due to mismanagement, etc.
· Sep 27 at 4:07pm
I think this a bit of an electrons and potatoes argument. Companies have organizational crises because of mismanagement. These crises are due to poor business decision making and the feedback mechanism can be severe. The crisis in the government is one of poor decision making, but the feedback mechanism is what?
Jul '10
Re: Hillary Clinton 2012: Because Women Make Better Leaders During a Crisis
Clinton grew up in the same influenced circles as Obamao did so would be no different at all. She is feelings based because that's the Dems m.o.....feelings.
Jun '10
Re: Hillary Clinton 2012: Because Women Make Better Leaders During a Crisis
I don’t mean to be an atavist, but if we look at the Israeli experience of women and combat only one conclusion can be reached, women should not be involved at the pointy end of the spear. First, women have at best sixty percent of the upper body strength of men and as a consequence imperil missions because they do not have the requisite physical strength in combat. Second, when a woman’s lack of physical prowess imperils a mission the men involved instinctively move to rescue the woman in difficulty which further imperils the mission. This is not to say that women can’t serve in logistical positions, but direct combat is a non-starter.
Jun '10
Re: Hillary Clinton 2012: Because Women Make Better Leaders During a Crisis
What has always troubled me about male/female differences, aside from the obvious ones that trouble me not one whit, are the significant psychological and physiological differences. The physiological differences to which I refer are things such as measures of upper body strength, depth perception, and overall endurance.
My problem with declaring men and women equal in all respects is that when I look at sports what I see is a complete repudiation of this axiom. Watching Olympic gymnastics would confirm these physiological differences as women’s events tend to emphasize balance where as men’s tend to emphasise physical strength and more particularly upper-body strength. Even looking at events such as running, both short and long distance, men’s times are better. What is surprising about this fact is that woman are reputed to have greater endurance than man on a pound for pound basis. Yet women’s world best times in the marathon trial men’s by some fifteen to twenty minutes. Clearly facts such as lung capacity play a role in overcoming endurance. Continued...
Edited on Sep 27, 2010 at 4:44pmJun '10
Re: Hillary Clinton 2012: Because Women Make Better Leaders During a Crisis
In addition, there are also differences that appear on normal or bell-curve distributions. When populations of men and women are compared the left tail of the bell curve confirms that baby boys have more problems—higher infant mortality, higher incidence of retardation, etc.—than girls. In a statistical sense boys are over represented on the left side of the bell as compared to girls. The statistical news, however, doesn’t appear to be all bad as boys are also over-represented on the right side of the curve, meaning there are more geniuses among boys/men than among women. This is not to say that women cannot be geniuses, but that there are fewer of them as a portion of a normal population. Continued. . .
Jun '10
Re: Hillary Clinton 2012: Because Women Make Better Leaders During a Crisis
As I wrote above, I don’t want to turn myself into an atavist chauvinist, but being a sometime sports fan I can only point to sports such as horse and automobile racing to prove the point that there are psychological differences between men and women that appear in competitive situations. When I consider horseracing, I see a sport that confers huge advantages to women as opposed to men the chief of which is weight and the related ability to maintain a light weight. Yet there are fewer women jockeys than men jockeys. The same is true for automobile racing. I attribute this dearth of women riders/drivers to psychological differences between men and women, more specifically: to drive a car in a competitive environment at over two-hundred miles per hour requires an almost suicidal aggression that is not found in women to the degree that it is found in men. As well, men are reputed to have a keener sense of depth perception, a vital talent in both horse- and auto- racing. In summary the games we play define our physical and psychological differences better than any polemical tract published by the WSJ or NOW for that matter.
Re: Hillary Clinton 2012: Because Women Make Better Leaders During a Crisis
Granted. But if the study's findings about how people perceive women to be better leaders during crises are true, then she has all the more reason to challenge Obama in 2012. She probably wouldn't be any better of a president, but perhaps she'd be more electable.
Edited on Sep 27, 2010 at 5:39pmRe: Hillary Clinton 2012: Because Women Make Better Leaders During a Crisis
Interesting point, Diane. I definitely heard from some people that Thatcher was elected as a rebuke to the men who had fouled everything up. "Give it to a woman. She couldn't do worse than them." It may be that when people are yearning for radical change, they elect people who are radically different in appearance. One reason Obama was able to rise so high despite his lack of experience was the novelty of electing a black president. That seemed like a lot of change, even if the change was along an axis in fact irrelevant to political competence--skin color. That may account for the "elect a woman in a crisis" mentality. It feels like a more radical choice. We can probably expect the phenomenon to diminish as the sight of women in the highest positions of leadership begins to feel more commonplace.
Sep '10
Re: Hillary Clinton 2012: Because Women Make Better Leaders During a Crisis
My experience in the business world is that women in high places have given up a lot of their femininity (feelings?) on the way to the top in order to prove that they are just as ruthless as men. Maybe they never had it.
I don't think that makes her any better to lead than a guy who has climbed that same ladder. I've had good and bad bosses of both sexes. I truly don't percieve a benefit to being a woman. Past experience counts for much more.
May '10
Re: Hillary Clinton 2012: Because Women Make Better Leaders During a Crisis
Yeah, Mrs. Pelosi could handle things so much better - NOT!
Gender and skin color are emotional reasons, not logical reasoning. That's why liberalism is so appealing. It makes you feel good about screwing up the country.
Jul '10
Re: Hillary Clinton 2012: Because Women Make Better Leaders During a Crisis
The IDF kicks our Marines' butts in exercises.
Jul '10
Re: Hillary Clinton 2012: Because Women Make Better Leaders During a Crisis
Diane Ellis, Ed.:
Despite thousands of years of history?
Sep '10
Re: Hillary Clinton 2012: Because Women Make Better Leaders During a Crisis
Yeah, considering the societal trend in Great Britain at the moment, I would take any study from over there with a grain of salt. Seems to be a whole lot of sounds-great-on-paper but disaster-in-the-real-world stuff piling up over the past few decades.
Jun '10
Re: Hillary Clinton 2012: Because Women Make Better Leaders During a Crisis
Michael Tee
The IDF kicks our Marines' butts in exercises. · Sep 28 at 4:22am
They may, but they don't use women on the front lines to do it, Michael.
Sep '10
Re: Hillary Clinton 2012: Because Women Make Better Leaders During a Crisis
I would like to say that Mrs. Clinton could not be worse than Obama, but that would be tempting fate. What would stop her from finishing the job at which she failed as First Lady--single-payer national health care? Nonetheless, and I say this with full respect,she is twice the man Obama is. If we must have a Democrat in the Oval Office, I would prefer one that doesn't seem so weak, so unlikely to defend his country at need.
I don't see her taking the nomination from a sitting president.