I consider myself pretty independent, strong-willed, driven, and other adjectives chosen to describe the "women's lib movement." However, I will not vote for a female candidate running for president, and to be more direct, do not think women are cut out for this role.
Shoot me now. Or stop reading. Either way, I understand and hope we can still be friends.
I have been in the business world, in a male-dominated field, for 6 1/2 years now. I am a stronger woman than I was going into it, but have come to appreciate the differences between men/women to an even greater degree since that time.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I think men and women are different?! We don't share the same strengths?! All of a sudden you think I'm not "for" equal rights?! Equal opportunity employment?! Come on, now.
It's a fact: men and women are different. No matter how much we females want to be like our counterparts, or more so, "considered" identical to our counterparts, we're NOT.
For the past two weeks, I've been working with a female insurance rep and a male insurance rep on a very important insurance-related matter. Lots of people are involved, lots of money on the line. I have a long-standing relationship with the female rep, I haven't even met the male rep face-to-face.
A couple days ago, I found myself defending each of the reps to the other. I took turns "pulling" for each one. I even made a BIG mistake out of ignorance and had to go against my female rep friend because it was the right business thing to do. I really don't have much at stake personally, but I am pretty sure a man would not have had the internal, emotional struggles I had making this highly unemotional, professional decision.
I caught myself saying, "Take the emotions out of this, Lauren." But really - is that possible? To a degree, yes. But to a greater degree, I'm emotional! There are positives to being an emotional being, and positives to being an emotional woman being.
We fight it and we become a little less like we were created. It may work for a while, a long while, it may even work to our advantage in some situations. But really, when it comes down to it, this strength of ours (mine) will prevail in the end and my internal struggles helped me come to the decision that needed to be made.
So - back to why I won't vote for a woman presidential candidate. Let's face it. We're just not cut out for the job. We're excellent managers, supervisors, CEO's, CFO's, professors, doctors, lawyers, you get it. But there are positions of power that just weren't designed for us, in my opinion. Like I said, stop reading if you want to shoot me.
Running a country, a people, a Congress, a world -- it takes a man. It takes the strengths a man was created with. It takes the non-uber-emotional, non-uber-sensitive, non-uber-nurturing qualities of the other sex. (Notice I inserted "uber" because I know a lot of men with those qualities in moderation which is great). Not all men are cut out for it, not even very many men. There are a lot of womanly men out there, and I wouldn't vote for one of these either. But put 100 men next to 100 women and I bet there'd be more qualified men for president than women. Just innately qualified.
I'm happy to be a woman. A woman manager. A woman professional. A woman mom. A woman crier. A woman emotional-decision-maker. A woman not running for president.
