'No, women wouldn't have solved the shutdown sooner!'

Article here. Excerpt:

'But, according to recent reports from CNN, MSNBC and the New York Times, Congress could have gotten things up and running again sooner if women had been calling the shots.
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As Ann Friedman noted recently, there is some data to support the idea that women in leadership positions are less impulsive, less corruptible and more willing to compromise than their male colleagues and counterparts. But researchers suggest that may be because, with so few represented in the seats of power, women in leadership positions feel they have to succeed because they have more to prove. And for all that Collins and Cantwell may have done to facilitate the deal that was eventually reached, there were other women, like Republican House members Michele Bachmann and Marsha Blackburn, working just as hard to maintain the deadlock.

So while it may feel good to read Hanna Rosin declare that, ”Perhaps this will be remembered as the week when everything shifted, when we realized that leaving groups of men in charge of global decisions and of facing down terrorists is not a good idea, and we’d better calmly hand the reins over to the women,” it’s still a flawed argument.

There is also something uncomfortable, even unfeminist about relying on reductive stereotypes about women to argue why more should be in power. Borrowing again from Friedman, while women’s alleged penchants for empathy and compromise are currently being used to advocate for greater influence in the public and political spheres, the same arguments are employed just as often to marginalize women and keep them at home – whether or not they want to be there.
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If that means cleaning up some political messes, all the better. But increasing the number of women in Congress also means that more will soon be making their own messes, too.'