Would women really make better leaders?

All this publicity for Sarah Palin has got me thinking about one of the most endemic myths of contemporary (largely Western) political culture: the idea that if women were in charge, the world would be a kinder, gentler place.

This is a load of bollocks.

Look at Margaret Thatcher. The Iron Lady, famous for crushing the unions, the woman who said: “There’s no such thing as society”; Golda Meir, the woman whom Ben-Gurion called “the best man in the government”; Indira Gandhi started India’s nuclear-weapons programme; Pakistan’s Benazir Butto was linked to widespread corruption.

As for South Africa, has the fact that there are so many women in government really made a substantial difference to the quality of life enjoyed by South African women and children? It’s hard to think of a less compassionate individual, male or female, than erstwhile health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.

Those women who stand out in South African politics — notably former deputy health minister Nosiviwe Madlala-Routledge and Helen Zille — do so because of their integrity (for the most part, the odd DA dodginess aside) and their commitment and ability to get things done. That they are women is a bonus for those of us who seek self-esteem through the achievements of others like ourselves, but ultimately this is neither here nor there.

As a woman, it irritates me no end when it is suggested that I should support a politician purely because we happen to a set of gonads in common. When Sarah Palin was criticised by feminist organisations for being the “wrong sort of woman”, some conservative writers, for example Australia’s Miranda Devine, called them on their hypocrisy. Which of course misses the point: why should anyone who represents a particular demographic expect support purely because he or she is a woman, or black, or Muslim?

I have higher standards for people I wish to represent me and my interests. I’m far more interested in the quality of their ideas than the precise arrangement of their chromosomes or the quantity of melanin in their epidermis. And for anyone to suggest otherwise is, quite frankly, rather insulting.