Women Leaders

The pictures above are of two of Marvel Comics' key women. Spider-woman was infected by a mad political conspiracy. She then rebelled against male bosses, and tried to fight crime. However, she kept running into the egos of her boyfriends and the obsessions of weirdo costumed stalkers. She would frequently have to do for them all with a venom blast and eventually stopped prancing about in a costume, deciding instead to get a proper job.

She-Hulk was ignored by most men, or patronised, until she went green. Unlike her male counterpart, she retained her brains, did not smash everything, and qualified as a feminist lawyer. Happy models both for some of my friends.

I go down to the Thames Magistrates quite regularly. Sometimes I take students, sometimes, I go for a spot of legal observation which I suppose could be characterised as rubbernecking. Serious stories are of course told in every court, and what happens even at the most ridiculous level affects everyone. I usually find different lessons in there though, and wouldn't want to say I was just entertained. The Old Bailey and Southwark Crown court I would recommend to anyone, though.

Anyway, I was down there the other day, and once again, every chap in court was apparently a woman. The District Judge was; her clerk was; the advocates were, with three exceptions; the probation officers were, and the usher was.

What struck me most was how competent, sensible, smooth and unpretentious the place was. The parade of uniformly male defendants and suspects acted like shamed boys or were quickly caught out by the very sharp judge. She was the best I have seen there, and there are several absolutely superb judges in the place. She noted failings in arguments, and was at turns severe, reassuring, and completely in control.

I also noticed how males were either little boys or puffed-up only to be deflated in the court. The whole place was an argument for the sexist rule of women. Some men would have fitted in well to it; many would have not.

That's been my experience of women in the law, here, from the kind, decent staff and officers in the Treasury and Office of the Middle Temple down to the highest court, where Baroness Hale was in my experience very funny. It is sadly not true in British politics, or at the young bar, but that's a distortion of narcissism and the values of a largely sexless media and political class, and any drawbacks apply to men and women. However, the wider observation holds for most of the world.

There has been a quiet but accelerating revolution in the west in the past thirty years or so. Women leaders in post colonial asia have not been undistinguished, of course, and only a fool would overlook Golda Meier in Israel. But Angela Merkel, Michele Bachelet, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Helen Clark, Mary McAleese, and Julia Tymoshenko are all walking proof of how sexist stereotypes of years ago are pointless. Angela Merkel, in particular, is, as my one reader will know, my favourite leader in the world at the minute.

I hope, when technology runs down and the convenience of modern life becomes more difficult because the economy changes and the oil runs out, the equality of men and women won't be lost. The false dominance of any one group over the other is a standing temptation in times of trial. Anyone with any sense of hope or life, however, will from time to time just raise a glass and thank god for women, even if we do seem nuts to each other from time to time.

UPDATE: not for the first time, I have been wandering around the web and found people thinking similar things to myself. Here is the Sunday Times on what it describes somewhat sensationally as a 'genderquake', though it seems surprised at the lack of women of substance in British political life. I also thought that I'd direct you to the website of Kathleen Sebelius, who is one of many excellent American female politicians and the Governor of Kansas. Some of the bits of heaven that don't look like Donegal will probably look like Kansas, so have a preview!