Not man enough, Mr President? - Building Gender Balanced Business

Men and women communicate in different ways. Kathleen Parker explains that men aim to gauge themselves against the competition while women band together and talk things out. “Obama is a chatterbox who makes Alan Alda look like Genghis Khan,” she writes.

The crisis surrounding the BP oil spill has served as an example as to how Obama’s rhetoric is not what you’d expect. It took 57 days for him to address the nation, to really lead the country. And when he did so, passive-voice construction took up 13% of his speech. That’s the biggest percentage in any presidential address of the millennium.

So what’s the problem with that? After all, Obama remains particularly astute in the art of rhetoric. But there’s still something wrong according to Kathleen Parker. She argues that though progress has been made in terms of gender equality and gender bias, certain social norms remain in place. Despite our inclination to move beyond gender specific norms, we find ourselves incapable of totally eliminating them.

Hillary Clinton was often criticized for coming across as too manly because of her combative attitude. Obama suffers from an inverse affliction that remains just as irrational. Parker stipulates that we seek out familiarity in our leaders because familiarity is reassuring. Once again, Obama might just turn out to be too ground breaking to be fully accepted. “Yes we can” break down age old societal norms? That remains to be seen.

The Washington Post