Women in Leadership Positions

Leadership and the transition of power has been, is, and always will be a big deal in society.  A leader, by definition, is someone who guides others and is seen as “in charge.”  Therefore, the person chosen to be in charge has a lot of weight on their shoulders.  It is a big responsibility, especially the leader of an entire society—like a king, queen, or president.  So what makes a good leader?  A leader should be able to think for the good of the community, which often means thinking with logic rather than emotion.

A stereotype of men versus women is that women are more inclined to be emotional and think with their hearts rather than their heads.  Men on the other hand, are stereotyped as the opposite: led by facts and their head, without as much consideration to the emotional outcome of a decision.  However, I would say that this stereotype is harmful because it leads us to believe that there are only two extremes: there is only emotion or logic, heart or head.  But this is not true, and a leader who lived by only one of these extremes would be a very poor leader.  It requires both—the capacity to make decisions for the greater good, but also the capacity to understand and consider the emotional outcome.  Therefore, I don’t think a woman needs to “dial down her emotions and act the part of a man” because I think that’s stereotyping.  But I do think that for a woman to be in a leadership position, she would have to be able to make decisions with less emotion—not because it is “more masculine,” but because it is a necessary leadership quality, despite the gender. 

But just as Hillary Clinton said, there is sort of a double standard for men in leadership positions versus women in leadership positions. “If you get too emotional, that undercuts you,” Hillary said. “A man can cry; we know that. Lots of our leaders have cried. But a woman, it’s a different kind of dynamic.”  It is definitely true that women are traditionally more sentimental or feeling-oriented than men.  But people should be judged by their abilities, not predetermined by their gender.  There should not be a double-standard.  Maybe Hillary was using this as part of her campaign, as some suspected: (“That crying really seemed genuine. I’ll bet she spent hours thinking about it beforehand.”)  But despite the motive, her statement still holds some truth.  A leader does need to have some degree of emotional thinking, but women are often judged harshly when they show this emotion.  Predetermined judging has always been a flaw in humankind, and it can trickle over to leadership positions as well.

Can You Learn Anything From a Void?


            We have been taught our entire lives that the bystander who lets something bad happen is as guilty as the one committing the act.  It’s just called a sin of omission, instead of a sin of commission.  And that’s really what a bystander does—they omit.  They act as if the problem never happened.  They choose to oversee it.  So yes, I know what I’ve been taught.  Bystanders are guilty by association, so those in Macbeth who carry out the executions are technically guilty, as are the Germans (including both Victor Capesius and Konrad Jarausch) who understood some depth of the atrocities the Nazis were committing, and either helped them to happen or allowed them to happen.

            But I don’t think we can be so quick to judge the bystanders.  How are we to know that in the same situation, we would be any different?  I would say that one basic fault of most humans is our tendency to follow the crowd, no matter where the crowd is going.  It’s difficult to stand up and fight the current, especially in cases where things like our lives are at stake.  Like the article said, to stop something like the Holocaust, millions of people would have to be willing to be killed for what they believe in.  And we simply do not have millions of martyrs in our society.  Sitting in my room, completely safe from harm, it’s easy for me to say that I would be willing to stand up for what I believe in to the death.  Of course it’s easy.  It’s not actually happening.  But if you put me in one of those situations—well, that’s a lot different.  I’m not saying that it’s okay for bystanders to let things happen.  I still stand by the fact that bystanders are responsible to do what is difficult and stand up for the right thing.  But I would like to acknowledge the difficulty of the task we are asking bystanders to do at the same time.

             I also would like to question the idea that the bystanders/”accomplices” hold an equal amount of guilt as the person committing the crime.  I think the amount of guilt depends on how much a person knows and understands about the crime.  (For example, in the most extreme sense, a toddler is not really guilty of something he or she does because of a general ignorance of right and wrong.)  But if the person knows what is going on and chooses to go along with it anyway, they hold equal guilt.  So in my opinion, Victor Capesisus holds equal guilt.  His actions may not have caused as much large scale damage as Hitler, but the depth of the crime is similar.  The same holds for the murderers who kill Banquo for Macbeth.  They knew what they were doing, and are therefore responsible for their actions.