Men in Skirts

I put that to some of my staunchly womanist friends who refuted it almost without exception. The more thoughtful might have observed that it could hardly be any different if all that changes is the leader and not the pack.

Women already have enormous power and they do behave bizarrely in the way that they hand it over to men, unthinkingly. It is similar to the way in which citizens of democratic countries apparently fail to realise that their vote can get rid of bad government. People refusing to vote, not for tactical reasons but simply out of boredom, are acting so irresponsibly that they deserve what they get.

At any one time in almost any country you choose at least one third of the electorate fails to exercise its power. And for women to shun this right that was so bitterly fought for and won seems particularly cavalier.

You could argue that women who choose careers rather than children relinquish their ultimate power — creation. There may be sound reasons but how ever you look at it the power to create is not to be passed up lightly. If men had that power they certainly would both exercise it and politicise it. When you consider how important women are to life and living it is quite amazing that we find ourselves in secondary roles vis a vis men.

Not surprisingly, many women choose to have their cake and eat it by having both children and careers but it is not an easy line to walk.

The workplace has its own demands, ethics and values and most of all it is very competitive. To keep your womaness and be successful requires a certain accommodation. Many women do not manage it well.

In my experience women bosses can be worse than male bosses in their treatment of ambitious female employees. They are scared to be upstaged by them not only professionally — a risk they have to run with male colleagues, but often also in the looks stakes. It is a fallacy to believe that women all work for the good of other women. We have been so desperate to get our share of the cake that sorority can disappear. Women at work want to be judged on merit and often submerge their more sensitive female side (that is nurturing) so as to be seen as tough.

Some women keep other women out altogether. Take Mrs Thatcher, the former British Prime Minister of the 1980s who left her indelible mark on contemporary British life, she was known for "handbagging" her male cabinet ministers but not into changing how they viewed women, nor how they worked, nor into some coherence in their expectations of women in the public and private spheres.

She famously did nothing to promote the cause or rights of women. She even did the opposite — she repudiated them. She saw the problems of women as individual, not social, and since everything was personal her government failed to put public money into health, education and childcare resources which could have made life easier for women.

Michele Bachelet, President elect of Chile reportedly promised that half her cabinet will be women.

This may point to a real desire to alter the structures that underpin Chilean society and it functioning, and a realisation that there is safety in numbers.

I hope that she is successful because without reshaping the systems Bachelet will merely be colluding in the traditional male way of organising to the detriment of half of society.

I remember once when a woman was appointed to a very senior BBC post she refused to be at work at the ungodly hour that was the norm established by former incumbents — all men. They didn’t have to start the day, domestically, as women do. She refused to behave like a man in a skirt.

If you believe one writing of history, a female Pope came to the medieval papacy in disguise. (Apparently, it is because of her that we have to wait for a puff of smoke from the Vatican when a new Pope is elected. The new incumbent has to sit on a bench with a hole in the middle and a Cardinal checks from underneath that there is a scrotum hanging in there). I haven’t been able to assess what sort of leader of the Catholic Church she was or if she even really existed but since she was in drag she must have behaved pretty incredibly.

Literature is full of stories of women pretending to be men. Shakespeare was very deft as using this sort of gender passing in his stories but time has moved on and with so many women gaining political power we should be looking forward to changes that make assuming the aura of manhood redundant, even in a man’s world.