Women in a world of "strongman" leaders

Let's consider the appeal and the danger of a certain type of leader

When I decided to find someone to write about strongman-style leadership, I had no idea how hard it would be. There was plenty on gender and “masculinities,” but little on the issue we see in the press all the time these days.

Indeed, adding a chapter about men to a book called Women and Leadership seems a little odd, but you’ll see from the extracts below that it makes good sense. This chapter was adapted from a journal article that had the global coverage I wanted, and the authors worked with a Berkshire editor and me to craft this new piece. We also got great advice from a British contributor whom I’ve got to know, David Collinson, who wrote for the Encyclopedia of Leadership, Berkshire’s original venture into that domain with James MacGregor Burns as senior editor.

You’ll find below a few salient passages from the chapter “The Strongman Problem.” I edited the new edition of Women and Leadership and co-authored the chapter “#MeToo and its impact,” venturing perhaps a bit farther than an academic writer would to connect #MeToo with the strongman problem. A bit from that chapter is also below, also as food for thought on this International Women’s Day.

Incidentally, the cover of Women and Leadership shows some of the women whose stories are told or who are discussed in the book. They are Billie Jean King, Margaret Sanger, Rachel Carson, Margaret Thatcher, Stacey Abrams, Soong Mei-ling, Enheduanna, and Michelle Obama.

From “The Strongman Problem”

In this chapter, we focus on how the hypermasculine and hubristic gender performance of so-called “strongman” leaders has major consequences for a stable, or more precisely, unstable world order. We also look at the threat that the prevalence of strongmen in politics has on the rise of women to positions of leadership. We examine how these strongman leaders impact our ability to engage in the kinds of collective problem-solving that humanity must undertake if it is to deal with existential threats of war, climate change, pandemics, cyber insecurity, terrorism, and the continuing growth in economic inequality between the developed and the developing world.

International relations scholarship generally looks at institutions, systems, and policies rather than at individual leaders. Research that takes a critical look at behavioral considerations in international relations and foreign policy is still in its infancy. Here, however, we distinguish between collective institutional leadership on the one hand and personal leadership on the other. Both are important to any explanation of international cooperation and its institutional form, multilateralism— that is, cooperation between two or more agents and the securing of agreements between two or more sovereign states.

For example, multilateralism in venues like the United Nations, proceeding through the joint governance of some 193 member states with input on collective-action problems, yields reciprocal benefits and space for diplomatic approaches to resolving disputes. Students of multilateralism have traditionally focused on the nature of collective leadership and all too rarely on the nature and impact of personal leadership. But multilateralism does not happen outside of the realm of human interaction. States are always represented by their human leaders. States don’t speak. States interact with each other only via persons that speak on their behalf.

Most strongman leaders will, given the chance, capitalize on fragile political environments, manipulating the dispossessed, unemployed, and disaffected people who are susceptible, and indeed often amenable, to nationalist and populist sentiments. This has substantial implications for international relations and the prospects for cooperative reform of world order. We cannot talk about global leadership without talking about the people responsible for it.¹

From “#MeToo and Its Impact”

The #MeToo movement has shed light on workplace harassment, and has helped to put more women into positions of leadership. It has also brought into focus the intersection between our ideas about leadership and sexuality.

The connection between the penis and power of various kinds is a topic that arises in public discourse about leaders and leadership. During the 2016 presidential campaign, for example, Republican candidates made suggestive remarks about the size and functionality of other men’s penises. A meme that circulated soon after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine showed a portrait of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy along with images of the pyramids and the Grand Canyon, saying that his balls could also be seen from space.

Throughout history, strong leaders have been expected to keep their followers safe in a dangerous world. As we move into a future in which leaders will be faced with global challenges such as pandemics and climate change that cannot be solved with military action, non-gendered leadership skills such as negotiation, persuasion, and cooperation, will be required. But an uncertain future, and growing consensus that national defense is of vital importance in protecting liberal democracies (where women leaders are more common), may also make strong-man leadership more appealing, and could conceivably affect how women lead.²

A thought to consider

Are there real differences between women’s and men’s leadership? Are there characteristics common to all women leaders? How has their leadership approach changed over time?

I thought of those questions this week when I listened to an excellent podcast about a recent decision by the US Supreme Court³ on the 14th Amendment (that is, whether Donald Trump could be removed from a state ballot for engaging in insurrection). The speaker, George Conway, said he could not understand why one of the conservative justices, Amy Barrett, wrote an opinion that seemed to argue with both sides. She wrote: “In my judgment, this is not the time to amplify disagreement with stridency. The Court has settled a politically charged issue in the volatile season of a Presidential election. Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up.” It seemed to me that she was taking a path characteristic of women leaders I wonder what you think?

Here’s another example. Former German chancellor Angela Merkel, who during her tenure was widely seen as the most powerful woman in the world, the unofficial leader of the West. Many consider her a model because she gained and kept power while staying true to her personal moral convictions. But the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022 has led to questions about her blind spot when it came to dependence on Russian oil and gas, and may well cast a shadow on her legacy. Will this influence the way voters see women leaders, or how women leaders deal with potential threats? Might this benefit strongman leaders?

1. From the chapter by  Taelyn Reid and Richard Higgott, Brussels School of Governance, Vrije Universiteit.

2. From the chapter by Karen Christensen and Donna Halper, Lesley University.

3. It was a US Supreme Court hearing in 1991 that led to the first major legislation, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, governing sexual harassment, detailed in the #MeToo chapter. Prior to the 1980s, there were few laws criminalizing this kind of behavior; the term “sexual harassment” was not even in common use until the mid-1970s.