Are women better at dealing with crises?

QUESTION: There is the widely peddled myth that women make better leaders in crisis situations. Does this have any truth in it?

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I saw your question and I smiled in the knowledge that yours is but a tricky one. I must resist the temptation of giving an answer that will prove controversial. You, at the outset, tell us we are dealing with a myth and yet you want us to fall into the trap of a yes or no answer.

I refuse to do that but will instead provide an answer I once gave to one of my teachers at the medical school that led him to call me a politician. The answer to your question is therefore this, ‘it depends’.

What, you now wonder does it, depend on, and what, after all is leadership in the context of your question. What must be most obvious is that it is not possible to generalise in that humans are different and unique in the things they can and cannot do. In this regard, there is no position in society that women can always do better or worse than men.

Does that mean that men and women are the same? Obviously not, because men are men and women are different from the biological perspective and even in the social roles that culture has assigned to each in different societies and at different times.

Gender roles are also known as sex roles and again generally determine what is to be expected of the biologically assigned gender. In this sense, there are in most societies those that are termed traditionally masculine and feminine roles in each society. The simplest and perhaps most visible difference is in the mode of dress in many societies, although this has also changed a great deal over the years.

In most societies, soon after birth, there is a process that starts and is known as gender socialisation. In most traditional societies there are two recognised genders, namely male and female. In recent years a third gender has gained increased recognition.

It is in this latter context that your question becomes very tricky because it is neither right nor proper to ignore these developments in our 21st-century world. In his book, God Is Not a Christian, Archbishop Desmond Tutu makes this point rather well.

He makes the all-important point that in His wisdom, God created humans long before Christianity and, therefore, all humans are not only His but are of equal value to Him. Emphasis is laid to the fact that in his view, the Bishop of Cape Town is sure that people of God like Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa will find a place in heaven in spite of not holding the Christian faith.

It is through the same channel that gay people and members of the third gender will find peace with their Creator, who, according to Tutu, cannot be limited by our rather narrow conception of Him. In other words, we must let God be God and have Him, have dominion over His creation without limitation by well-meaning but ignorant people.

So, you now want to know, do men and women differ in their ability to lead?

A better question might perhaps be, are there any general differences in leadership styles between men and women. The answer to this much simpler general question is yes.

In general, women are said to be better able to build consensus in their leadership styles. They are also said to be able to have a better sight of the future and are also more patient with those that they lead.

Additionally, they are said to have a greater ability to build teams and are better mentors who show a greater sense of communication to the teams that they lead.

Are there men with equal or better skills as we have enlisted above as belonging to women? The answer is a most emphatic yes.

Are there women leaders without these characteristics, again the answer is a most emphatic yes. So, in this rather narrow regard, there are men who are leaders like women and women leaders who are like men.

When it comes to choosing the leader you want, therefore, it is more important to get to know him/her than to predetermine the gender of the person you want. However, are there some jobs that are more commonly done by women?

Yes, most midwives are women but there are also men who do the job. Are there women who work on construction sites, yes, but in most instances, the heavy lifting work is done by male workers.

As you can see, I have avoided a yes and no answer but hope that I have made you consider the question more broadly.