The Politics of Disharmony in Management of Gender Differences

Abstract

Harmonious inter-generational continuities require the male and the female of the species to engage with each other through interdependence. The chronic under-representation of women in politics everywhere, long after women secured justiciable equal rights in many democracies, intrigues scholars. Political participation varies by ethnicity, age, religion, and culture but that does not account for gender. Patriarchy, discrimination, domination, and oppression are historically castigated but there can also be other reasons. This study explains that underrepresentation of women persists because motives and power-bases to improve their political participation are not easily mobilized due to psychological differences in how men and women acquire and exercise political influence. Strategies suiting intra-group mobilization of women for securing greater inter-group influence are different from those that suit men. Thus, what appear as 慸eficits' of political skills inhibiting acquisition of political power by women are dissolvable with designed interventions. Indeed, men may appear challenged were they to compete with strategies more suited to women. Gendered identities affect processes of inclusion, exclusion, representation, and participation of women in politics in various ways. The dynamics of disharmony in management of gender differences is traceable to different repertoires of response choices with which men and women build relationships and form groups. This study analyses gender differences in coping with anxieties and defending against anxieties and identifies sets of causal triggers that produce disharmony as outcomes arising in the form of deprivations and taboos during the process of growth and identity formation. Coping responses to anxieties are substituted and complemented by primitive and developed defences traceable to the way men and women are cared for as babies, infants, children, and adolescence through to adulthood. The repertoire of coping responses as well as primitive and developed defences evolves differently for men and women. This is immutable in some respects, modifiable in others, through practices embedded in psychosocial aspects of gender identities, child-rearing practices, and culture. The two horns of the women?s dilemma pressurize them either into behaving like men or evolving creative and innovative strategies. The latter is challenging since the required talent, planning, organization, and mobilization cannot be wished into existence by rational or emotional pleas for equal representation. The major findings of the study are follows: Human dignity, equal freedom, social cohesion, and global harmony, as desirable goals, are beyond reach if social justice is sought only through demands, disputes, claims, and entitlements over substantive and procedural equality of rights. The pursuit of equality as a policy requires to be underpinned with deeper analysis of the sources of conscious and unconscious human behaviour (of individuals and groups) that produce inequitable outcomes. The restoration of gender balance in the political arena can have the greatest and most lasting impact on sustainable ways to design and govern world affairs in the pursuit of harmony. Human dignity, equal freedom, social cohesion, and global harmony, as desirable goals, are beyond reach if social justice is sought only through demands, disputes, claims, and entitlements over substantive and procedural equality of rights. The pursuit of equality as a policy requires to be underpinned with deeper analysis of the sources of conscious and unconscious human behaviour (of individuals and groups) that produce inequitable outcomes. The restoration of gender balance in the political arena can have the greatest and most lasting impact on sustainable ways to design and govern world affairs in the pursuit of harmony. This paper urges women and men to experiment with designing strategies that suit women and test whether such strategies redress the political under-representation of women. � 2006 SAGE Publications.