The Devil Wears Pantsuits: Gender and the Exercise of Power
In the movie, “The Devil Wears Prada,” Meryl Streep’s character, the CEO of a major fashion magazine, is nasty, surly, vindictive, impatient and brilliant. She manages by intimidating her necessarily size-four staff, “clacking” with their four inch heels to her every whim. Her male assistant tolerates her fits of temper until he can happily ascend to leadership in his own firm. The question is, “Does she have to manage her staff in that manner? Is being nasty an effective leadership style?”
Fast forward to the current presidential race, where, for the first time in American history, a woman is competitively vying for the presidency against an African-American man and a white male Republican nominee. How does the woman prove to the electorate that she is as strong as a man and can be trusted to pull the trigger whenever required? Stated more specifically, does Hillary Clinton have to act “tough” to gain respect from the electorate? My answer is a resounding, but measured “No.”
At the ABC-sponsored debate led by George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson, Senator Clinton chose to pile on to Republican attacks linking Rev. Jeremiah Wright to her opponent and insinuate that he was associated with a fellow board member who was once a member of the Weather Underground. The New York Times criticized Senator Clinton’s campaign tactics in an editorial titled, “the Low Road to Victory.” While the Times endorsed the Senator as presidential candidate, it bemoaned the “mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests” that had been run in Pennsylvania and before. The editorial continued:
On the eve of this crucial primary, Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad — torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook — evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war and the 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” the narrator intoned.
Boasting that she was better equipped to handle the demands of a dangerous world, Senator Clinton also claimed that if Iran attacked Israel under her watch, “We would be able to totally obliterate them.” The latter remarks are not only cause for concern, they are cause for alarm.
As a deputy assistant secretary in a small, but important civil rights agency, I had my first experience with the exercise of power over a male-dominated senior staff with much more experience in the field than I. Like the lead character in Prada I first believed that to take and keep control, I had to be surly sometimes, nasty, even loud when I was not heard by my male subordinates. I also had difficulty listening when I was busy being “in charge.” This was very taxing and I found that my staff became more alienated in the process. However, I eventually learned a lesson about power that few women get to learn: you do not have to display your power in order to wield it.
I found it interesting that wherever I sat at our oval-shaped table, the male managers would follow me and sit around me. If I moved, they moved too. More importantly, if I made a decision, and made it clear that I had made the decision — that was the end of the matter. I realized that I did not have to constantly repeat myself and I did not have to yell. Like the CEO in Prada, who never raised her voice, I realized that it was I who had the power. That was enough. That “intangible sense of authority” radiates from within. It does not have to be broadcast.
It is my hope that Senator Clinton, if elected, will learn how to recognize and use her power, calmly and with confidence. No one is expecting her to be the surly and vindictive CEO in Prada, or her husband, the former president, or even Margaret Thatcher. They are certainly not expecting her to obliterate anything unless the circumstances absolutely demand it.
A president does not have to be a “man”; she has to be a leader.
Shirley J. Wilcher was deputy assistant secretary for federal contract compliance, U.S. Department of Labor, from 1994 to 2001. She is currently executive director of the American Association for Affirmative Action in Washington, DC.
It would help if a president also had to have CHARACTER, and by that I mean a poised capacity to own the results of their actions, as in accountability… given who’s held office lately, and what’s been gotten away with, those traits might as well appear on the list of “Endangered Species.”
I have NO respect for someone who will subtly but shamelessly play the ‘wronged woman’ card to appeal to voters, knowing that many women can relate to that situation. My own mother fell for it !
How can she put herself out there, knowing that her husband was on the phone ordering Bosnia to be BOMBED while being pleasured under the Oval Office desk ? That is beyond sick. I would not be surprised if she had a relationship with Lewinsky too. These people understand and USE the dark frequencies of sexual energy in ways most of us cannot even BEGIN to imagine. Will we wake up to that fact in time, or continue to allow them to salaciously titillate us with dribbles of info about their creepy not-so-secret sex lives ?
It happened under the desk?
No class there. Gheeze, and he was our president.
alaskamaid: How do you know what Hillary knew and didn’t know about Bill and his bad behavior? Where you there? I get so sick and tired of this kind of comments about things no one but the principle agents could possibly know.
I am a manager and a leader in healthcare. There are lots of ways to manage and inspire. It has been my experience that when women take a bold action, other women come out of the woodwork to decry their management style. This seems to be a cry for a style of management to the writer’s liking. I hope Hillary doesn’t take it seriously; I don’t.
Mean, nasty bosses often turn mean after having to deal with subordiantes who are less than professional, selfish and demanding. And yes, mean and nasty can be a very effective leadership style, especially in deadline driven enterprises where subordinates just don’t get it.
HRC doesn’t want to “lead.” She wants to “win” so she can “rule.”
Huge difference. That’s why she’s playin’ tough guy - leaders lead through examples set and maintained; tough guys rule with threats, intimidation and violence.
She wants to rule. She’s never “led” anything in her life.
rockerbabe1
I am not talking about what Hillary did or didn’t know at the time, I mean what she obviously knew at least as soon as the rest of the world, and since then she has been pursuing a path which would put Hubby Bill right back in the White House. That sucks. Honestly, it does. Not to mention the cocaine trafficking thru Arkansas when Bill was governor, etc. etc. That kind of behavior doesn’t magically go away.
Or the ‘move’ to New York to secure a Senate seat. Didn’t that particular seat have something to do with the Kennedy guy who fell out of the sky ?
Right on, frank1569 ! Hillary doesn’t want to be President. She has her mind set on being Queen. Queen Hillary. Kind of a nice ring to it, isn’t there ? So all you Hillary supporters better get used to how it sounds, because in her mind that is what she is ‘fighting’ for. And if she prevails, that is what we’ll get, along with Once and Future King Bill aka Slick Willy. I feel sick to my stomach.
BTW the Bushes and the Clintons have been in cahoots for a LONG time. That alone is enough reason to want someone else in the White House, given that a Bush or Clinton has been Pres or VP since 1982. Yikes !
I don’t care about Bill Clinton’s little flings or whether Hillary knew about them. I don’t care if she did the same thing.
I do care that they are both race-baiting, amoral, despicable warmongering pigs and undeserving of further notice or influence. Let Bill and Hill take their 100 million and get the hell out of our lives.
Please.
HIllary has shown that she does not deserve to be elected. She will do anything aand say anything to be elected. She is another evil woman and I do not believe she can be elected. The repubs want her to run so they can dredge up all the old Clinto stories and let McCain have the 3rd Bush term. Then next time, it will be Jeb Bush.
Hillary aside, the lesson put out to us in this post is an important one. And hey, it works for guys too! Quiet Strength coupled with laughing ease is a great combination. Wish I had more of it, especially the latter.
One of these days people are going to have to put aside all the crap and come together like the republicans do, or else they’re going to be the ones keeping the ball.
‘course I think they already have it fixed so they will anyway, so I guess people can keep doing what they’re doing.
John Freeman _ Me too, unless the laugh is a rehearsed and forced cackle used to deflect serious questions, as affected by a certain Democratic candidate.
I thought you’d like to check out the political allegory of mine that I just found a literary agent for. It’s a story set in the context of a teacher discussing with his class all of the evidence that the Bush administration is as corrupt as it is incompetent…and how to rectify the Constitutional crisis we face. It’s couched in a discussion about the urgent need to stop abusing Mother Nature. I wrote in 3 dozen celebrities to play the students, so it’s very funny despite how infuriating it is. You can read it at www.stoplittering.com/theswitch.htm and, yes, StopLittering.com is my site.
“Mean, nasty bosses often turn mean after having to deal with subordiantes who are less than professional, selfish and demanding. And yes, mean and nasty can be a very effective leadership style, especially in deadline driven enterprises where subordinates just don’t get it.”
What a crock of shit. Mean and nasty people are that way because they lack the necessary skills and have to make up for it (they don’t, really) with bluster and nastiness. Mean and nasty has nothing to do with leadership.
G-d help us if Hillary becomes another Margaret Thatcher.
Leaders, men or woman, use both the carrot and the stick. They know when, and who to use it on. Tactics differ depending on the labour conditions and other concerns . In times of labour shortage for a particular class of worker, the carrot comes out more often. When labour is plentiful, and employees fear losing their jobs as they live from paycheck to paycheck, and need the health insurance, some bosses may take advantage of that to be mean and nasty, but leaders will just use it to get more output from their employees. Unhappy workers are not very productive, but if the worker is too happy and content, the same can be true. Has to be a balance that works for both the employee and the employer for the corporation to achieve it’s profit potential in a competitive world market. For government, the balance has to be between the general welfare of the citizens, and the corporations that produce goods and services. True leaders know where this balance is.
Using this to evaluate government today. It is clear government has turned to the stick and is now mean and nasty. The citizens are fearful and dumbed down with propaganda, poverty, drugs. Corporation are given a free reign. This is not good for the nation, and any leader recognizes this. Why is it allowed? It is a consequence of globalization today, where the individual nation is not as important. A completely globalized world today must be a Totalitarian one, since there will be no competition, there will be just one world and one government. This is where our leaders are taking us.
The national citizen of yesterday was important to both government and national corporations, since the nation sought independence from other nations. In a globalized world, corporations no longer need the national citizen of the developed world to produce it’s goods, and they have value only as a consumer, since it may move it’s production to cheaper labour in other nations. Nations then become dependent on goods produced elsewhere, or in the developing world for goods they produce to be purchased elsewhere, and they become interdependent. Corporations that produce essential goods and services become global corporations, and are able to use their influence to absorb and control national governments whose nations are no longer independent, and their size makes it easy to control access to goods and services, and punish those nations against globalization and free trade.
One world global government will essentially look like a single global corporation who will rule the working class with a stick, since there will be no competition for labour, and profit will no longer be a driving force since there will be no shareholders expecting to share the profits. Production will be geared to keep the elite living in comfort, and to educate and sustain the workers so they may keep producing at the jobs they have been assigned after assessment. In an industrialized age, few workers are actually required to keep the elite living in comfort, and the rest become surplus. Since the resources of the earth are presumed to be finite, surplus humanity may be eliminated with justification. Estimated surplus humanity at 5-6 billion people.
In a globalized world, unlike in a world of independent nations, revolution is impossible, since no region is independent for all it’s necessities, and the global police will be powerful and be in great numbers relative to the localized population at large that dissent. Any dissent will be crushed.
The global police would technically be a threat to the elite, but by micochipping each human in a way to terminate people on demand, they can be controlled.
So basically, we do have leaders working in the shadows, they are working towards one end, globalization, and they control the provisional government, be it a Bush or a Clinton or an Obama government.
Globalization could be possible without being a Totalitarian government, but only after each nation had become independent, developed and democratic. Then a democratic republic of nations would be feasable, with a democratically elected global government, elected by nations, each vote weighted by the population of the nation, or some other agreed upon criteria. This would take a century without war to accomplish. We could be halfway there following WW II, if a different path was chosen. Instead, our elite chose global fascism for us.
Hillary, Obama and McCain, call them leaders or puppets as you will when one of them becomes President, they will lead you further to globalization and global fascism. If they choose another path once elected, they would be taken care of. JFK proved that.
MIMICCS: Valid analysis IF the new variables of oil depletion, global warming & chaotic weather events, and the boomerang of karma (a/k/a universal law) were not operating on the human-political equation you define.
Hillary Clinton is to Barack Obama as Robert Mugabe is to Morgan Tsvangirai.
Great, Wilcher is yet another person who demands that Hillary display an extremely narrow and highly-controlled range of personality characteristics, and if she diverts for even one moment she is harshly chastised for it and her whole competence is drawn into question.
Btw, I wouldn’t equate President of the United States with the Executive Director of a black lobbying firm.
Merwan, you’re an idiot to compare Clinton to Mugabe. Go to school.