Heck- My sister-in-law didn't talk to me for three years because I asked her children to split a soda. Tell me THAT'S rational.

Neither did she shoot you in the stomach, punch you in the face, or break your fingers. "Not speaking" is a bit more civilized.

Every time the issue of women as leaders comes up, someone mentions Margaret Thatcher, or Indira Ghandi, or some other woman leader who has been cruel, nasty, hard as nails, or whatever.

The problem is that we can never KNOW what women would be like as leaders, at least not until they had been in power for several generations. All women leaders operate under the male paradigm which has been in place for millennia. They also operate in a near vacuum, as they are usually the exceptions rather than the rule.

If man and woman had worked in tandem from the beginning, rather than one sex needing to dominate, we might have a world in which both were equally strong, equally valid as leaders, and who might influence each other.

But we just can't criticize women leaders for acting like men when they are working in a male paradigm.

Discussion?