By Ali Makke

Ever since humans set foot on earth, it became a matter of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ in regards of desires surfacing out. With that put in mind, such needs are considered just a fancy word of saying ‘survival mode’, as they become growingly destined to create a sense of willingness in one’s self. In fact, one of the higher-edge needs is no other than the thought of dominance, the thought where one has the last word and the power to command. So, just as changing a color of a dress doesn’t change its color, modifying the forms of power would never change the urge of achieving it. On a different dimension, men being the majorly dominating force of political landscape had a considerable damage on Women’s involvement, with little to no talk being credited to such issue. Following up this lead, what could be the motives for men behind monopolizing such field?

One drop in the ocean of reasons behind that is how men perceive mixed enrolment in such field. Needless to say, the dice rolled to men’s side when looking back through the history books, where empires were primarily hinged on military expansion which is hardly an attribute women possess equally. Rolling the wheel, it was common sense to consider that men will hold the torch through the passage of time, as men were considered the pioneers of the game as well as sharing the pie would have sounded irrational without sensing the actual need to do so. Such understanding isn’t only entitled for the concept of power but is a piece of a psychological fact that human kind succumbs to. For instance, a physicist researcher wouldn’t just ignore Einstein’s or Newton’s reasoning in their own researches, and so is the case when it comes to power. From a top view, most men strongly argue against the case of women involving by simply relying on their experience as well as their alleged ability to handle pressure better than women do, as it is considered no brainer to view politics as one of the most mentally and socially demanding jobs. On the other side of this tug of war, women wouldn’t seem to easily concede such claim where their general sentiment states that their higher tendency towards emotional behavior has nothing to do with the ability to handle an opposing job to their attributes, along with the irrelevancy of past as an indicator since women have quite evolved on many different scales in which politics shouldn’t be seen as an exception of.

One other way to look at it is that men view women as being less pragmatic than what qualifies them to reserve their seats in ministries, parliaments, councils or any other form of political presence. First of all, both sides tend to acknowledge that real life politics carry out as one totally different from the dramatic side of the evil and the good, and thus both put in mind that they would be better off embracing the ‘dance with the devil’ rhetoric in order keep floating, or otherwise they would see themselves burdened by their ethics. In short, politics could be best referred to as an actual example of the phrase “Hunt or Get Hunted”, in which interests outshine any empathy or “you have my word” kind of commitment. However, the problem arises from a different approach, the approach by which men estimate that women consider discussing politics on such a scale would be indifferent from actual practice. And so, the riddle of ‘egg or chicken’ finds its way to surface in a different form, where there isn’t one exact point for any of them to carry out a discussion from as it is all a common sense perception that is not meant to be defied. In details, men believe that actions such as the ability to adapt to uncomforting situations such as discussing a deal with opposing parties or delivering a motivational speech for their supporters are specifically tailored to them. In their opinion, women would rather follow the methodical path as they would allocate more weight to the moral code, or play by the books in other words. For example, it is widely known that politics are usually the motive behind radical decisions such as military intervention, which is one of the points men believe they have the lead in “On the contrary, they tend to oppose more military spending or the use of force to solve conflicts and are against capital punishment [4–6]. They support less Politics and Elections 2 discriminatory policies and have more positive attitudes toward homosexuals than men” (Ella Mebane, M., Aiello, A. and Francescato, D., 2020. Political Gender Gap and Social Dominance Orientation. [online] Intechopen.com. Available at: https://www.intechopen.com/books/psycho-social-aspects-of-human-sexuality-and-ethics/political-gender-gap-and-social-dominance-orientation ). Most men believe that such behaviors are ‘necessary evil’ carried out by means of proceeding with their agendas.

In a nutshell, men have a ton of reasons to follow their beliefs rather than yielding women regular representation in a way that won’t to make it to the headlines. Two of the main reasons behind that are portrayed by their right of succession of the predecessors, and the other reason is their belief in their pragmatic supremacy over women. Reasons can be displayed on a hundred different scale, but the real question is: When will this conflict find a way to hang its boots?

Cover picture taken from https://thepinkpens.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/visiting-women-at-work-3/