The Montreal Mirror's Juliet Waters interviews Blema Steinberg
Blema Steinberg’s first book, Shame and Humiliation: Presidential Decision Making on Vietnam, won the Quebec Writer’s Federation’s first book award. Her second book Women in Power: The Personality and Leadership Styles of Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, and Margaret Thatcher is due out later this spring. Steinberg uses her training as a political scientist (the first woman in Canada to obtain a doctorate in international relations) and a psychoanalyst (she started a private practice in the mid-’80s) to examine the personality and leadership styles of world leaders. Since the gender of the next president of the United States still remains to be seen, we figured this might be a good time to talk to Steinberg about how men and women govern differently.
Mirror: What are the main differences between women and men politicians?
Blema Steinberg: One big difference with women politicians, Hillary included, is that they all score much higher on dominance traits than male leaders usually do. They’re all very controlling, domineering and assertive, they’re strong willed, and they’re often rather narrow in their focus.
M: Another trait you mention is contentiousness, something we’re seeing more of now.
BS: Yes. That’s true of all of the women I’ve studied. And the question is why? I think it may come from a sense of having been put down, and having to scream louder to be heard. So it comes across, as the media says, as whiny.
M: There aren’t a lot of books written about women in power. There are so many written about women and power, women and their different ways of working, managing and power sharing etc. But it’s pretty clear in your book you don’t see a “female” leadership style.
BS: I don’t believe in women’s different leadership style, certainly not among political women. I mean Carol Gilligan’s notion of women speaking a different voice—that may be true—but the women who speak in a different voice don’t end up being political leaders.
M: In fact, Obama seems more typical of the Gilligan stereotype of leadership style, with more of a consensus style, supposedly less negative.
BS: Top down vs. bottom up. I think there is a genuine difference in their leadership styles. One of the things said about Obama, when he was editor of the Harvard Law Review, was that he would listen to everyone’s opinion and they just wished he would make up his mind and the meeting would finish. That’s the risk, that he’ll have difficulty making decisions. Whereas with Hillary, one worries that she’ll make decisions too precipitously.
Rumour has it that when the Serbs where bombing Bosnia, it was she that basically put her foot down with her husband and insisted that the United States had to get involved and NATO get involved.
The women that we’ve seen have certainly not been reluctant to use force. All these women were involved in war. To some extent, Golda had hers forced upon her, and to some extent that’s true of Thatcher. But when the time came to make those tough decisions, there’s no question that they were more than up for it. But you know, one can also say “well are women likely to be more trigger happy because they are women and because they don’t want to be perceived as weak?”
M: The women in your book didn’t exactly seize power. They were all put forth as compromise candidates when an obvious male leader wasn’t available. That’s not the case with Hillary.
BS: No, Hillary has staked it out loud and clear…we haven’t seen enough of Obama to really know where he stands on issues. Whereas with Hillary, all her warts are there, her contentiousness, her domineering manner, her feistiness. But she does have undeniable skills. And truthfully the women who have served have worked so bloody hard. It’s unthinkable that a woman leader would have the persona of a George W. Bush, or a Ronald Reagan and be elected.
Recent Comments