Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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We're still with the issue of democracy. In my previous column I presented answers to the question, "Are dictators ever good," one of the ten questions posed by the Observer. Here I shall relay the answers given by a number of leading intellectuals to the question, "Are women more democratic?"

While the answers varied, it was interesting to note that women answered the question in the negative, whereas men confirmed the idea. Katie Riophe, a writer, was rather scathing in her attack against women. "Has anyone on earth ever been nastier, more brutal, than little girls?" she asks.

Riophe goes on to say, "The hierarchies between women are so rigid, so patrolled, so absolute, it seems ludicrous to pretend that women in power would be more democratic, more inclusive, more generous than those who are less fortunate, than their male counterparts." Women in power, concludes Riophe, "are, if anything more vicious, fiercer, more stealthy and effective in their fierceness than men."

Another woman takes this argument further. She believes that the few women who reach the upper echelons of a male- dominated global political culture "often succumb to what are considered male traits". Golda Meir, Israel's first and only female prime minister, "made very little headway for peace in the region and was belligerent as any of her male colleagues". In Britain, "Margaret Thatcher spearheaded the Falklands War and famously presided over an all-male cabinet, doing very little for greater female involvement in British politics."

Furthermore, continues the writer, "It's just not war. Female politicians are as corrupt as males. The Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and the Bangladeshi Khalede Zia have both had serious corruption charges levelled against them. Even Indira Gandhi was convicted of electoral corruption in 1975."

In contrast to these arguments, we find Roger Scruton agreeing that women are more democratic than men. He backs up his opinion "with the overwhelming evidence provided by my wife, Sophie, who never does anything without first ascertaining how others will be affected by it, and who strives always to please".

Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian writer, believes that we will never know. "Women in authority," he writes "often find themselves in positions where they must first overcome male prejudice." For this they may overcompensate "and fall headlong into the male trap of dictatorial conduct, just to prove they are not to be taken for granted."

"Is democracy good for everyone?" asks the Observer. Wole Soyinka answers emphatically, "Yes for everyone except children who are innately tyrannical and require dictatorial parents." RW Johnson is of the opinion that democracy is good for everyone "but," he goes on to say, "there are quite a few countries that have been cobbled together artificially, or are far too big and can only be ruled dictatorially in their present form -- Iraq, Congo and Sudan, for example. The only thing to do, he continues, is to break them up into smaller units. He gives Yugoslavia as an example which went out of one dictatorship into lots of smaller democracies. After mentioning the advantages of a democratic system, he concludes, "The sad fact is that there's no way for a country to become properly democratic except by living as a democracy over time, with all the ups and downs that means. Even in the West, democracy is quite recent -- women only got the vote in 1945 in Italy and France and in Switzerland not until 1971."

Bryan Gould believes that democracy is good for everyone: "Even those who are scornful of democracy and who would fancy their chances if allowed to grab what they could would lose something of real value in a non- democratic society. Few of us," he goes on to say, "value properly the benefits of living in a coherent, integrated society, where everyone has a value because everyone has a vote."

Tristam Hunt gives a balanced view. While more often than not, democracy is good for everyone, at times of war, for instance, and national emergency, "the practicalities of democracy can be suspended subject to the rule of law. The more subtle question," he concludes is "whether one mode of democracy is suitable for all societies everywhere. On the one hand, it is right to tailor a democracy to reflect contexts. On the other hand, the old argument that some societies were inherently unsuited for democracy seems a patronising western fallacy."