Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy (38 page)

First (in line with a lot of other data), there was a big shift, with the number of democracies more than doubling from thirty-seven to eighty in that quarter century. The countries that transitioned to
democracy had higher average levels of women’s educational attainment, more women in the labor force, and lower fertility—
first
. These three factors predicted more democracy five years later, and even more democracy ten years later. “Rather than being a natural consequence of economic development, we have shown empirically that female empowerment has a causal effect on democratic development, independent of the commonly used measures of modernization, and as such it deserves much greater attention in future democracy research.” This is a brand-new discovery, and it solves, for these two huge changes, the problem of the chicken and the egg. Women’s empowerment comes first, and democracy follows.

So if you’re wondering what the future holds, these studies give us a crystal ball, and here is the shape that emerges as we gaze into the glassy globe’s statistical clouds: as women gain in influence, all else being equal, the world will become more democratic, more socially compassionate, more equal, less discriminatory, less sexually casual, and less pornographic.

Those are the trends we can forecast from the grass roots up, but that’s not all. Growing evidence shows that women leaders operate differently from men. Consider a recent example. The government shutdown of October 2013 ended despite a complete congressional impasse. On October 14, 2013, the
New York Times
explained how:

In a Senate still dominated by men, women on both sides of the partisan divide proved to be the driving forces that shaped a negotiated settlement. The three Republican women put aside threats from the right to advance the interests of their shutdown-weary states and asserted their own political independence.

Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said, “I probably will have retribution in my state. That’s fine. That doesn’t bother me at all. If there is backlash, hey, that’s what goes on in D.C., but in
the meantime there is a government that is shut down. There are people who are really hurting.” Two women Democrats in the Senate followed their Republican colleagues’ lead, and men on both sides also followed:

Of the 13 senators on a bipartisan committee who worked on the deal framework, about half were women, even though women make up only 20 percent of the Senate. Senator John McCain of Arizona joked at several points in their meetings, “The women are taking over.”

McCain had served in the Senate since 1987, when Nancy Kassebaum was the only incumbent woman senator (Barbara Mikulski entered with McCain.) One of the male Democrats, Senator Joe Manchin III, thought that the even gender mix explained the committee’s success. But Republican Senator Susan Collins, who had started the process by courageously calling for the compromise on the Senate floor, said, “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that women were so heavily involved in trying to end this stalemate. Although we span the ideological spectrum, we are used to working together in a collaborative way.” While many of their male colleagues crossed their arms and sulked, women from opposite sides of the aisle phoned and e-mailed each other nonstop. The men saw a deal they could live with and followed suit.

This would not have surprised Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, who had said in an interview two years earlier, “My own experience in Congress is when women are on committees and at hearings, the nature of the discussion is different, and the outcomes are better—we reach better solutions, better decisions are made.” So the Senate women are punching far above their weight in solving the most critical problem facing the nation, the one that must be solved before any others can be: D.C. deadlock. Incidentally, of the five women who led the historic compromise, three have children, as do Senators Amy Klobuchar, Heidi
Heitkamp, and Jeanne Shaheen, who joined their colleagues in forging the deal on the bipartisan, bi-gender committee.

Of the record twenty women sworn in as U.S. senators in January 2013, nineteen were interviewed by Dianne Sawyer on ABC News. Barbara Mikulski set the tone by criticizing the gridlock fostered by their male colleagues, saying, “We don’t believe in the culture of delay.” Dianne Feinstein said, “You know, we’re less on testosterone. We don’t have that need to always be confrontational.” Gillibrand said, “If this Congress were 50 percent women, you can bet your bottom dollar we would not be debating birth control.” Kelly Ayotte told a story about her eight-year-old daughter asking her not to run for president. Why? “Mom, because I want to be the first woman president.” To which Claire McCaskill replied, “Did you break the news to her we’re not waiting that long?”

What happens when women are in an executive rather than a legislative position? There aren’t (yet) enough women heads of state to compare them systematically to men, but there are enough in some other governing roles. In what has to be the most elegant study of its kind, political scientist Lynne Weikart and her colleagues surveyed 120 mayors—65 women and 55 men—of comparable cities with populations over thirty thousand. The two samples were similar in many ways, but there were key gender differences. “Female mayors were far more willing to change the budget process, be more inclusive, and seek broader participation. Finally, more women mayors than men were willing to admit fiscal problems and discuss changes in their goals.”

These findings confirmed previous studies of women in various governmental roles. The late governor Ann Richards of Texas is quoted as saying, “The joy of having power is being in a position of distributing it, giving it away, empowering others.” It’s hard to imagine a man describing governance as the joy of giving power away. Weikart called her article “The Democratic Sex.” Interestingly, women mayors wrote much more than men in response to open-ended questions;
this is consistent with the finding in other studies that women govern more transparently. In answer to one of those questions, a woman mayor wrote, “Frequently mothers will introduce me to their daughters,” a comment that speaks volumes about the future.

What about leadership in the private sector? In December 2013 it was announced that the next CEO of General Motors would be Mary Barra, a thirty-three-year veteran of the company who started at age eighteen, enrolling in GM’s school for engineers. Her father had worked there as a die maker for thirty-nine years, and she herself interned on the factory floor. She was known as a “car gal,” and she was the board’s unanimous choice. According to the front page of the
New York Times,
“She has been a rank-and-file engineer, a plant manager, the head of corporate human resources and, since 2011, the senior executive overseeing all of G.M.’s global product development. And she has, in the parlance of the Motor City, gasoline running through her veins.” Her mentor and predecessor in the job said, “Mary was picked for her talent, not her gender,” and described her selection as an emotional moment: “It was almost like watching your daughter graduate from college.”

The
Times
went on to say, “She is known inside G.M. as a consensus builder who calls her staff together on a moment’s notice to brainstorm on pressing issues. . . . She has a soft-spoken manner that belies her intensity on the job.” She is married and has two children, fourteen and sixteen. But she loves the boy stuff and has often been seen at the test track, driving at high speeds to get a feel for how new models perform. And she likes to take the boys out of
their
comfort zone; she had engineers working in car dealerships to get a feel for what customers want. As for the competition, she intended and intends to win.

She is no token example. Women now occupy many senior positions at GM, and they understand their female customers. Four who were on an engineering team developing crossover utility vehicles argued
successfully for a space below the left footrest to accommodate drivers in high-heeled shoes. “Things have changed dramatically,” Barra said in an interview. “There are women in every aspect of the business. You start with our board. We were just recognized for having a very high percentage of women board members. . . . Through my whole career, I have seen more and more women. It’s been a decade where we have had many women plant managers. When I started in 1980 that . . . wasn’t necessarily even comprehended. And maybe 15 or 20 years later there were many women across the country and across the globe in leadership roles, running operations.”

It was a proud moment for her and for women, but she was not destined for an easy path. In early 2014, Barra had to begin shepherding GM through its greatest challenge in years, the revelation of a faulty ignition system that had caused at least thirteen deaths and required a massive recall of vehicles. Although there were many serious questions, she was not considered responsible for the failure, which included long delays in making the information public, and she was generally praised for her openness and poise in handling severe criticism after the fact. She took full responsibility on behalf of the company and immediately set about making changes, but to say that she was leaned on by journalists during this period would be putting it mildly.

In June 2014, the results of “a sweeping internal investigation” led by a former U.S. attorney were announced in a large-font lead article on the front page of the
New York Times
. They included widespread incompetence and neglect in the engineering and legal ranks, although no criminal actions were found and no blame was placed on Barra or her closest associates. She fired fifteen employees, including a vice president and a top lawyer, and disciplined five more, “highly unusual,” noted the
Times,
“in an industry where such purges have been rare.” Summarizing the report and the actions following at a meeting of around a thousand employees in Michigan, Barra said, “I never want to put this behind us. . . . I want to keep this painful experience in our collective memories.”

The company had by then recalled 2.6 million vehicles and engaged the independent expert Kenneth Feinberg to develop a compensation plan for victims and their families. However, Senators Claire McCaskill and Richard Blumenthal said they would hold further hearings, and it was likely that prosecutors will continue investigating the deaths. Many lawsuits were mounted or threatened. But Barra’s response to this crisis, occuring immediately after her appointment to the top job and unprecedented in the company’s history, was generally thought highly professional, open, decisive, and wise. By September she had made the changes and was looking toward the future, announcing that the first GM car to drive itself would be available in two years.

You could argue, of course, that a male CEO might have done the same; so what difference will it make when there are many more women in this kind of role? There are actually a lot more systematic studies of gender and leadership in the corporate sector than there are in government.

First, surveys simply try to get at people’s judgment: Who is a good leader? In 2012 business leadership consultants Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman surveyed 7,280 managers and executives, “a sampling of male and female leaders from high-performing companies” known for commitment to leadership development. The sample was predominantly male, yet the researchers rated women as better leaders in twelve out of fifteen domains. Women were seen as better in sales, marketing, human resources and training, general management, finance and accounting, product development, legal, engineering, information technology, research and development, and (slightly) quality management. Men were considered better leaders in customer service, facilities management and maintenance, and administrative and clerical domains. In the index of overall leadership effectiveness, an “average rating from an aggregate of manager, peer, direct report and other ratings,” based on forty-nine leadership items, women were voted superior to men at a very high level of statistical significance.

As for specific competencies, women outranked men on twelve out of sixteen. This included the ones identified by conventional wisdom—developing others and relationship building, for example. But the biggest gaps favoring women were in taking initiative, practicing self-development, integrity and honesty, and driving for results. Men were rated slightly but significantly more positively on only one measure, “develops strategic perspective.” This research was reported on in many media outlets, often with the simple phrase “Women do it better.” In one interview Zenger said, “It is a well-known fact that women are underrepresented at senior levels of management. Yet the data suggests that by adding more women the overall effectiveness of the leadership team would go up.”

So much for the overall ranking, made by a majority male sample. But there are more specific studies, not only of executives but also of directors. An ingenious one published in 2013 by economists David Matsa and Amalia Miller asked the key question in the title: “A Female Style of Corporate Leadership?” They took advantage of Norway’s initiative a few years earlier: the country had passed a law requiring boards of directors of public companies to include women. In fact, Norway mandated a quota of 40 percent women on every board—a doubling of the proportion in the average firm—within two years. Matsa and Miller compared these companies with otherwise similar Nordic firms.

There was no significant effect on most corporate decisions. “Sizable differences emerged, however, in these firms’ employment policies. Specifically, firms affected by the quota undertook fewer employee layoffs, causing an increase in relative labor costs,” with a consequent reduction in profits of 4 percent compared to other firms. However, the researchers estimated the impact on employment to be much larger, around 30 percent. The authors concede that their follow-up was not yet long enough (the mandate was passed in 2006) to establish whether skipping mass layoffs might eventually drive profits for the companies, which
showed loyalty to trained and tested employees. “Ultimately, time will tell whether the gender quota created value for these firms in the long run.” The parliament of the European Union voted overwhelmingly in November 2013 to impose the same quota for corporate boards of large companies throughout the E.U. by 2020, so there will soon be many more opportunities to analyze the consequences.