I'm a 54-year-old working woman and a wife, stepmom and grandmother. I'm also an unashamed feminist. That doesn't mean Hillary Clinton would've gotten my vote. I had a lot of reservations about her (and Bill) being on a possible return ticket to the White House.
Nor does it mean I'll vote the McCain-Palin ticket because there's a woman on the ballot. Sarah Palin is a social conservative. I'm not. Our disparate views could well trump our shared gender.
Most feminists I know wouldn't vote for a candidate just because she was a woman. But it is good to see women as serious candidates for high office. It's been too long coming.
Internationally, America ranks 60th overall in women's political leadership -- behind Sierra Leone and tied with Andorra. We're only 14 percent of Congress and it took us a long time to achieve that. Of over 12,000 people to serve in Congress since our nation's beginning in 1776, only 1.8percent have been women. Just 5percent of cabinet positions have been held by women. (These statistics are from "Closing the Leadership Gap -- Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World," a 2004 book by Marie C. Wilson.)
Women haven't fared much better in the corporate world. While nearly half the work force, women comprise only about 12percent of top executives and 16percent of corporate officers. In 500 of the country's largest companies, women hold less than 13percent of the board seats.
So it's exciting and hopefully groundbreaking to see a woman taken seriously as both a presidential and vice- presidential candidate. It's also good for the game of politics, because it may just change some of the rules. And that might be good for the country -- for women and men.
Men and women lead differently. I'm not as interested in the why of this -- whether it's from different learned social roles or testosterone (or lack of it) -- as I am in the fact of it. Women tend to be collaborative, men tend to be competitive.
In 1990, Sally Helgesen replicated a study on women leaders in the workplace that Henry Mintzberg had previously done on men. Mintzberg found the male executives worked at an unrelenting pace with little time spent on other activities, controlled information and were singularly task oriented. In contrast, Helgesen found the women executives shared information, emphasized inclusion and cooperation, and had a networking rather than an authoritarian style.
Business is catching on to the idea that women's leadership style offers advantages in this complex, fast changing world. Management guru Tom Peters, co-author of the best-selling ''In Search of Excellence,'' told men who wished to succeed in the information age and a global economy to study women's ways of leadership. John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene, authors of ''Reinventing the Corporation,'' Megatrends, and Megatrends 2000, said the most successful companies in the future would be those that aggressively hired, trained and promoted women.
We should all be glad with the notion of women adding to the recipe of great leadership their own ingredients -- inclusion; effective communication across lines of authority, gender, race and ethnicity; and relationship building. It will be good for the country, the world and our daughters.
It will also be good for our sons. A Harvard medical study of high school boys found that 96percent think they should be completely self-assured, 76percent believe they should always be ready for sex, and 24percent think they'll lose respect if they talk about their problems. That's a tough road to manhood. Where do boys go with their feelings of sadness, disappointment and fear? With women as leader role models, men may feel it's alright to bring their emotional intelligence and caring side to the leadership table.
Anchorage resident Valerie Van Brocklin is a former state and federal prosecutor in Alaska.
By VALERIE VAN BROCKLIN