How Political Power Is Affected By Gender

Video Transcript

"Hello, my name is Arielle Reid in Budapest, Hungary, and today I'm here to talk about how political power is affected by gender. Now, how you define political power and how you define gender will affect the kind of answer that you get. So, I'm going to try today to do this in the most general and open way possible, so that it's easily understandable and easily applicable. So let's first by talking a little bit about political culture. Now political culture is a collection of beliefs, assumptions, mores, traditions, around a political system, and generally entails what constitutes politically acceptable behavior, and politically and culturally acceptable uses of political power. Now, another concept that I'd want to highlight is that, is sex versus gender. Whereas sex is biologically defined, male or female, gender is a social construct, meaning that it's something that society...that societies create independently of each other and in various ways for different societies. And because gendered...gender is a social construct, what we begin to understand is that certain behaviors are gendered. So, for example, where women are expected to be quiet, and docile and nice and smile, and very kind, and men are expected to be a little bit more aggressive, a little bit more assertive, you can see how gendered behavior affects the way that the genders are constructed. Now if the gendered behavior does not correspond to the political culture, that's where you begin to see disparities in who can wield political power, who can hold political office. And how political actions are understood by the broader political culture as either good or bad. So political power is related to gendered behavior. If a woman who is quiet and kind and nice is expected, as leader of a country, to wage war, there might be a little bit of a problem given that.....given if she exhibits aggressive, very tough, very hard characteristics in order to win that war. So in this sense, political power is affected by gender because of the different expectations that society has. If political power is something that is defined as...in very masculine terms, as aggressive, as domineering, as assertive, and women are expected to be the opposite of that, then you'll begin to see how the political process and how, who wields political power is definitely about gender and gender issues."