Vivre la Difference

Jackie Ashley, over in The Guardian in the UK, is getting most annoyed about the way in which people regard women and women as voters. She’s actually very funny about it:

There is a caricature of the female voter which I’ve heard, with numerous variations, for years from all parties. It goes like this. First, she is fickle. Men have grown-up, fixed ideas about politics which are difficult to shift. Women? All over the shop - suggestible, easily impressed, quick to take the huff. In the past I’ve heard pollsters, columnists and MPs describe “the female voter” as if she’s an amalgam of all their worst girlfriend experiences. It’s a wonder they haven’t got round to blaming election results on the time of the month.

And of course there’s a lot of truth to this: not that women voters are like this, but that they are regarded as being like this. However, it’s also true that male voters are looked upon in a certain similar manner. Look at the way in which all US Presidential candidates end up going hunting, to show how “manly” they are, and to connect with the Bubba vote. That is just as much a sexist discrimination, isn’t it?

Much of the truth, I think, lies in the results of our very own EQSQ personality tests, what they show us about the division in the way people think. We divide people up into those with systemizing or empathic brain types, with a goodly chunk in the middle having balanced ones. OK, we’d expect systemizers to look at politics in a systematic manner. Here’s a problem, here are potential solutions, which politician is supporting the one most likely to work?

We also have empathizers, who would be much more interested in whether they connected with the politician. Hunting being one way of doing so with male empathizers, kissing babies perhaps (an old political activity of course) with the female empathizers.

One thing though which I think makes empathizers of almost all of us. Modern politics is incredibly complex: there are thousands of issues. So we can’t in fact be systemizers about it, we have to go the emapthy route. Who amongst those standing “feels right”?

Next, and closely related to that, she is dangerously easily swayed by pretty men. A glossy head of hair, a sexy, growly voice, excellent dental work, the hint of a six-pack behind the well-cut shirt and a melt-your-heart smile - that’s what wins the woman voter. She is unimpressed by her own kind and she wants a man in charge. A second element is that she is attracted in particular to the faithful, reliable new man. Be filmed washing the dishes, or with a tousle-headed mite clinging on to your shoulders, and you’ll improve your leadership magnetism no end.

And that’s why politicians assume that such things will attract the female vote. Not because women don’t care about policy, not because it isn’t important, but because there’s so much of it that we are all, in the end, both male and female, forced to make our political judgements on just such matters. Who looks good, who has the trustworthy smile?

Of course, we’d all like a better way to run a country but we’ve not found one yet.