WOMEN AND LEADERSHIP: Clio writes: You suggest that women have a difficult time with leadership because they are too focussed on “relationships” to keep track of institutional goals, and cannot accept the idea of the “mask of command“.

I suspect that these problems are more visible among younger women aspiring to lead than among older ones. I haven’t noticed that either is as much a hindrance to women who’ve lived long enough to outgrow the hypersensitivity of youth, which makes many of us flinch from both crticizing and criticism.

Work experience helps; so does having married, managed a household, and had children. The latter point may sound counter-intuitive, but one advantage of raising children is that you learn to take knocks. (I speak from observation here, NOT experience.)

So though I think it’s true that more women have a hard time with leadership than men, it’s not for the reasons you suggest. I think, rather, that women are less hierarchical than men and for that reason are INTENSELY distrustful of women who rise to positions of power. “Who does she think she is?” is often their reaction to a woman who gives them orders. It’s not necessarily envy (though it can be that too). It’s sheer animal knowledge of each other. And this attitude hardens with age, I believe.

Women who acquire positions of leadership seldom find it easy to keep the respect of their female peers, although they may manage to command that of much younger women. And when one half of the human race distrusts you, it’s difficult to lead effectively.

Women accept the leadership of men, on the other hand, because (I suspect), it’s far less challenging to their self-image and sense of their own power and autonomy to do so. Besides, men have the excuse, in women’s eyes, of being “mere males”; their pomposity is lovable rather than annoying or presumptuous. And their right to give orders can be assumed to rest upon their larger size and ability to defend us.

Besides this, ALL female authority carries with it the whiff of mother-power, and makes both sexes uneasy in memory of their childish dependency and need to break free of it. If you haven’t experienced this reaction already you may yet do so. Or you might be lucky.

But from what I’ve seen it’s middle-aged mothers of grown children who do best at commanding the respect of both sexes–especially if they come from extended families in which managing people is essential to harmony.

Even female perceptiveness about people is a double-edged sword. It means that you know too much about what your subordinates, and enemies, are thinking. No doubt it explains why women get lost in the “minutiae” of relationships–your phrase? But much of this information is quite unnecessary to any leadership role.