Patriarchy has long held the belief that women don't deserve the opportunity to occupy leadership roles because the emotional pressure up there would be too much for them to handle. Come 2020, this false claim has been laid naked in the public for all to see. And its falsity has been proved by none other than the President of the United States of America himself: Donald Trump. The President has constantly been tweeting his emotions in the run-up to the final results of the 2020 US Election that will decide the fate of the position he currently holds.
In what many are calling a practical "meltdown", Trump has made anguished calls to 'STOP THE COUNT' (of the votes) and 'STOP THE FRAUD' (of the votes, again) even as experts have fact-checked him and assured the public that the electoral voting system is proceeding transparently. It is an interesting sight, how Twitter has marked a series of tweets by the President "disputed" and "misleading", shielding them from automatic view.
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And it's even more interesting that people across the world are being given a glimpse of how one of the most powerful men in the world is reacting to work pressure. Trump's election tweets only establish the point women have been making for decades now: that emotional or professional pressure doesn't see gender. That it is a weak and baseless argument to deny equal opportunity to women at workplaces. And that it is a way of pushing the sexist notion of women as the "hormonal" gender that over-reacts. Going by Trump's tweets, emotional outbursts aren't looking so "feminine" now, are they?
Greta Thunberg's Epic Mic Drop
The sharpest hit on Trump - a leading prototype for men who mansplain how women must feel - has come from a 17-year-old. Swedish activist and environmentalist Greta Thunberg retorted to Trump in the very words he had used against her last year. And her savage mic drop has won the internet. In 2019, Thunberg rose to worldwide fame for her impassioned speeches on climate change. When she was thereby named TIME's Person of the Year, Trump had reacted to it rather sourly. Now, as he locked in a tough battle with Joe Biden for the presidential seat, Thunberg has served her revenge at just the perfect moment:
Needless to say, the internet is bowing down to young Thunberg for this epic turnaround:
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The Stereotype Of The Angry Woman
The stereotype that women can't handle distress has been used to dismiss women of every age and in every field. It becomes exacerbated even more when gender overlaps with another facet of the woman's identity - race, ethnicity, class, background. For instance, when football players burst out in anger - sometimes even physical - on the field, the audience justifies it as a natural reaction. Sports are competitive and will invoke some raw emotions, they say. But when Serena Williams reacted strongly to her 2018 US Open loss, she was immediately condemned as the "forever angry, black woman."
This trope has existed to pull down women not just in sports, but even in politics. Former First Lady Michelle Obama wrote in her memoir Becoming about how Americans began viewing her almost fearfully after a rousing speech she gave during her husband Barack Obama's presidential campaign. And this concept isn't foreign to India by any measure. In 2019, when Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra gave a fiery speech on the "rising fascism" in the Lok Sabha, naysayers tore her down by saying she was high on hormones.
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Women In Leadership Roles: Always A Good Idea
Why does society discriminate between genders, when it comes to emotions like anger? Why is an angry male calmed down with reason, but an angry female invalidated as being unreasonable? Moreover, can emotions be generalised? Aren't emotional "meltdowns" gender-neutral? Have men stopped occupying high leadership roles even though they have as much a propensity for mental stress as women do? Are men being given lesser opportunities to play despite the emotions they exhibit on the field? After Trump's reaction to the poll results, will men not be elected as President henceforth, for fear of displaying their anxiety in public?
No, they will. They should. But that is no reason women shouldn't. If anything, the coronavirus pandemic has shown us how indisposable women are in leading nations. The countries that had the swiftest, most effective response to COVID-19 were ones where women sat at the top seats: be it Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand or Tsai Ing-wen in Taiwan. Their crisis measures were taken with a healthy mix of wisdom and empathy. And isn't that just the best way to use emotions to good advantage?
Clearly, the argument that women are better outside offices due to their incapability of handling the stress of a rough-and-tough turf, is misinformed. It is one of the reasons that the glass ceiling in workplaces still exists. It's time it was broken down completely.
Views expressed are the author's own.
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