By Lloyd V. Hackley
The status of women in America has forever been a source of myths and conflict, not the least of which deal with leadership abilities and intergender animosities.
Two long held myths are that women are “reluctant” to support women and that women don’t make good leaders.
Myths that have prevailed for a long time, are intensive and extensive across various interlocking and interrelated societal components, and are buttressed by misleading, deliberately slanted information become so intrenched in the minds of both victims and victimizers that facts which counter the myths are considered to be fabrications.
Whenever and wherever myths about women have ever existed, often couched in alleged “Benevolent Paternalism,” they resulted from centuries of male domination, misogynism, machismo, narrow-mindedness, and heteropatriarchy, exacerbated by bamboozling and gaslighting. Stereotype examples of the Debilitating Myths, no matter how small the number, come to represent the entire population, while the examples of the opposite fail to gain traction in minds. If the world beats with a socialization and politicization stick long enough, you may begin to use that stick on yourself and on people who look like you – a form of Internalized or Proxy Victimization.
For example, women tend to underestimate and downplay their abilities, even though their performances do not differ in quality from men’s performances. In fact, global studies have found that companies employing women in large numbers outperform their competitors on every measure of profitability. What holds too many women back is their choice not to try, not their actual competence – Proxy-Victimization. (SOURCES: Multiple, including my own decades of experience in leadership positions)
MYTHS DEFY TRUTH: One of the “tenets” in the philosophy of America’s Flawed Democracy is that symbols, words, and appearances have taken precedence over what they are supposed to represent – the factual, the substance, the reality. People now actually prefer the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence. Illusion is sacred, Truth profane. Inviolability is held to be enhanced as Objective, Verifiable Truth decreases, and Illusion increases. (From Feuerbach)
Even Virtue, no matter whether it has been defined for you by your church, your political party, your culture, or any affinity group, cannot hold sway separately from contemporary, factual reality without itself becoming a principal instrument of evil. (From Albert Camus)
THE TRUTH: The 2016 presidential contest put to rest, for me at least, some of the prevailing political myths related to women. However, because Trump “won” the presidency, the busted myths went unnoticed.
HILLARY CLINTON’S WINNING MARGINS – Clinton over Trump…
TOTAL ELECTORATE – 48% to 45%
(CLINTON GARNERED NEARLY 3 MILLION MORE VOTES THAN TRUMP)
All women – 54% to 39%
Black women – 98% to 1%
Black men – 81% to 14%
Hispanic women – 67% to 28%
College graduates – 57% to 36%
White college graduates – 55% to 38%
Nonwhite college graduates – 68% to 26%
Nonwhite non-college graduates – 77% to 18%
18 to 29 years of age – 58% to 28%
30 to 49 years of age – 51% to 40%
Even among WHITE WOMEN, one of Trump’s strongest support groups, Trump beat Clinton by only 2 percentage points.
TRUMP DID MUCH BETTER OVER CLINTON AMONG NON COLLEGE GRADUATES OVERALL – 50% TO 43%; AND WHITE NON COLLEGE GRADUATES – 64% TO 28% (The largest Trump margin among all groups assessed)
(SOURCE: PEW RESEARCH CENTER – NOV 29 – DEC 12)
