Gender Inequality in Politics

Precedent about the role of women in domestic as well as political affairs is embalmed in history. Now as in the past views about political leadership split along gender lines. We know for a fact that queens in history compare favorably with kings but men are likely to say that they fare better than women as political leaders. History reveals that this had not always been so.

More or less two and one half centuries ago Plato said that the management of social affairs is open to both men and women. In 1809 Washington Irving in Knickerbocker’s History narrated how a wife “ruled the roast, and in governing the governor, governed the province, which might thus be said to be under petticoat government.” In 1910 Baroness Orcy (author of Scarlet Pimpermel) wrote Petticoat Government which tells about French aristocracy concerning Madame Pompadour’s influence over the King and France.

The first real blast against women governing a nation was done by John Knox in 1558 when he said that allowing a woman to rule is repugnant to Nature and subverts order, equity, and justice. Jean Jacques Rousseau (1762) could not agree more: “Women have, or ought to have, but little liberty; they are apt to indulge themselves excessively in what is allowed them.”

Adolfo Lopez Mateos (Time, 1959) was in favor of women governing a country, proposing that a woman should be treated differently from a man by means of honoring her more if she goes into politics. Former U.S. presidents Lyndon Baines Johnson and Richard M. Nixon could not agree more. Johnson said that to conclude that women are unfit to the task of our historic society is equivalent to “closing male eyes to female facts.” Forty-two years ago Nixon predicted that “in the next 50 years we shall see a woman president perhaps sooner than you think. A woman can and should be able to do any political job that a man can do.” (Is America heading in that direction?)

Margaret Thacher (1975) agreed with Mateos, Johnson, and Nixon: “One of the things that being in politics taught me is that men are not a reasoned or reasonable sex.” (1972). Furthermore “In politics if you want anything said, ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman.” (1975).