Women in control.

The same. I believe that women are liable to corruption/lying/embezzling to the same degree as men.

Besides that there should be more women not only leading departments/ministries but also acting on leading civil servant positions, ....

..... most men in such positions are either married or have a (female) partner. :wink:

??? lol What does being married or being in a relationship have to do with anything Walter?

CONTROL, fishin'. You loose it :wink: (but it's mostly a rather nice loss) (and truely worth it - Mrs. Walter just being at the door)

Ahh! I see. Nothing you can't gain back with a pair of handcuffs and a riding crop though!

Given the traditional concerns of women, I would HOPE there would be an increase in spending on education and health services, along with decreased spending on WMD. But you never know. I imagine women in power would be just as susceptible to lobbyists and other outside influences as men.

Would women be more inclined towards diplomacy and less inclined than men to send their sons and daughters off to war?

I don't know, AU, consider, if you will, Zenobia (who lead armies against the Romans), Tamara (who lead the Georgians against the Turks), Margaret of Tuscany (who fought the Holy Roman Emperor, and rode out, sword in hand, to smite the enemy in person), Eleanor of Acquitaine (who participated in the Crusades while Queen of France), Elizabeth Tudor (who fought the Spanish), Queen Anne (monarch during the War of the Spanish Succession), Maria Theresa (whose reign in Austria was inaugurated with the War of the Austrian Succession)--and let us not forget our contemporary "warrior queens," Golda Meier, Indira Ghandi and the "Iron Lady," Margaret Thatcher.

Not a lot of historical evidence that women are less likely to go to war than men.

However, everyone is responding as if women would be in control all of a sudden, therefore leading this patriarchal world.

What if Au meant by his original question, "What do you think the world would be like if women rather than men were in control of governments and government functions?" that he meant that to be within a matriarchal world?

That is where one would truly be able to see if there would be differences.

Because women are both physically and psychologically different from men, I do believe priorities would be different.

I would like to think that the ones who give birth would better care for life if we were in charge.

I would like to think that the ones who tend to multi-task rather than be so single-minded and one-goal-at-a-time-oriented would provide a less stressful environment.

I would like to think that the ones who use our empathy and communication skills to survive now would then be able to use those traits to forestall or rid the world of war.

However, I would also like to think that I would be the new Goddess, so WTF do I know?

:wink:

I believe women are the coldest beings God created , capable of much more hatefullness, vengence and purposefully hurtful action than a man ever dreamed of. Unconcerned with "form" when they fight they fight only to win.

The picture of woman as natural nurturer is bullshit in my opinion. They nurture only to satisfy a need for control in themselves, and as a tool of passive aggressiveness to achieve control.

The world would be even scarier if women were in charge IMO.

bitter divorce, eh? sorry...it happens.

nice cliched assumption there suzette, but no cigar.

I'm not mad at women or hurt by them, I just think what I think based on my observations.

Nice try though.

Frankly, I wasn't even 'trying'; I was aghast at what you had wrote. I will admit I felt personally (as a woman) attacked and was quite offended.

It's okay. I'm over it now. I think.

It wasn't meant to be an attack at all, and I love women.

I think tigers are beautiful and don't hold it against them that they are man eaters by nature.

She'll only come out at night
The lean and hungry type
Nothing is new, I've seen her here before
Watching and waiting

Ooh, she's sittin' with you but her eyes are on the door
So many have paid to see
What you think you're gettin' for free
The woman is wild, a she-cat tamed by the purr of a Jaguar
Money's the matter
If you're in it for love, you ain't gonna get too far

(Oh-oh, here she comes) Watch out boy she'll chew you up
(Oh-oh, here she comes) She's a maneater
(Oh-oh, here she comes) Watch out boy she'll chew you up
(Oh-oh, here she comes) She's a maneater

Lots of people are cold, calculated and completely self-interested, without regard for others beyond easing their own way to their solitary goals. Were i the descendant of thousands of years of stricture by the dominant, governing "other sex," declared second class by my culture's dominant religious theme and excluded from participation in the normal forms of personal, socially applauded success--the odds are very good that were i ambitious, i would have few scruples about whose body i had to walk over to get where i want to go.

Maria Theresa, once charmingly described by the misanthropic monarch of Prussia as a "fat German housewife," was very simply and attractively in love with her husband, Charles of Lorraine. They had many children, which did not interfere with her very real duties as de facto, if not de jure empress of what would have been the Holy Roman Empire, had she been a son rather than a daughter. She loved her children, had few illusions about the life awaiting the offspring of a couple wiedling so much power in Europe, and when war and strife were thrust upon her almost from the day of her father's death, she knew immediately that she must shoulder the burdens of the Archduchess of Inner and Further Austria, Upper and Lower Austria, the Tyrol, Carinthia, Styria and a good deal of northern Italy. Her husband would not have been capable of keeping up the fight--although a natural genius for finance gave him the crucial role of keeping it all afloat, which he did marvelously well. Frederick of Prussia's father died within a month of the Emperor Charles, and the newly orphaned King immediately attacked the newly orphaned Archduchess, taking from her, in the process, the province of Silesia, which had been worth more than 25% of her father's revenues. Maria appealed to the people of Bohemia, who elected her "King," as had been their tradition with her male ancestors. She went to the Hungarians, held up her infant son Joseph to them as the promise of the future, and was acclaimed "King" by them, with cries of Vivat Rex. She stayed at home with her husband and children, and ran that wealthy, scattered and vast empire, and as she was not at the front, she organzied the government and the military to be responsible, little more, but very strictly so. She produced a military which could survive even when it could not succeed, and an artillery establishment which was to serve the empire well to its last gasp under Franz Josef in 1918. She instituted civil reform, public education, standardized testing for professions--a host of reforms for which her vaingloriously, petty and childish son Joseph took the credit, before she was even in her grave.

She survived Frederick the Great, as she did the concurrent attack of France, in two wars. When Prussia, Russia and Austria partitioned Poland the first time, she pleaded with her son (whom she had officially associated with her reign) and her foreign minister not to take part--but, true to her engagements with Joseph, when her son insisted, she went along. Frederick commented, in his typical acid fashion: "She wept, but she signed." Circumstance makes us all what we are to a significant extent, and the best for which we can hope is that we are mostly able to hew to our ideals. Maria Theresa did her level best, and accomplished far more, in my opinion, than any man who ever ruled those lands.

Matilda of Tuscany (i referred to her incorrecly in an earlier post as Margaret) was often referred to as "the daughter of the Pope." In an as yet uncynical age, they simply referred to her devotion--people did not yet think that a Pope would engage in orgies in the Vatican. She got the name because she attempted to defend the Pope's Italian holdings from the rapacious greed of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, who wished to break the back of the Papal political power. She was truly a military leader, and when things looked bleakest, she would draw steel and charge out into the midst of her enemies, hacking and slashing for all she was worth. Naturally, this made her all-male body guard more than a little frenzied--she used this on more than one occassion to effect a hasty escape when apparently trapped. She endured one seige after another, and lost, eventually, her entire patrimony to the Emperor. In the final settlement, she got much, but not all of it back. Upon her death, she left her still considerable estate to the Holy See. She was sufficiently obsessed with her goal, that she took no account of what the common people of her lands suffered from more than a generation of war. She seemed not to care that warfare eventually destoyed for a time, every city in her lands. When she rode into battle, her object was to kill, as quickly as possible, anyone who she could get within reach of her sword. She was quite skillful militarily, using scant resources to prolong a war for many years, that most men would have lost in a season. One needn't have much imagination, but just a little thoughtful pause, to understand what this meant to the Tuscan peasant.

My personal conviction is that the only differences between men and women apart from different plumbing packages, are culturally derived. It is my opinion that character takes no notice of gender.

I certainly appreciate your thoughtful post, Setanta, but science has shown there to be real differences in the brains of men and women. The plumbing also leads to differences other than just the physical, don't you think?

I can certainly respect you if you disagree because science seems to come up with theories and proofs that go with the times; but, I would appreciate your input on it anyway.

Thanks!

My reponse would be to wonder to what extent thousands of generations of assigned roles might not do to the physiology of the brain.

DAMN.

Well, that clinched it.

You're my 2nd crush here on A2K.

aw, garsh . . .


(blushes, scuffs toes, grins, looks at feet)