It'll Soon Be A Woman's World

Saturday, Oct. 07, 2006

WOMEN'S WORK: Speakers address the Women's Forum For the Economy and Society in Deauville.

MYCHELE DANIAU / AFP-GETTY IMAGES

Posted Saturday, Oct 7, 2006

What does hobnobbing amidst the high-end opulence of Deauville on the Normandy coast have in common with the grim logic of natural selection in prehistoric Africa? Quite a bit, according to Helen Fisher, a physical anthropologist at Rutgers University. She was speaking to hundreds of women executives, activists and scholars who gathered last week to discuss how to better put their strengths to work in a world dominated by men.

Though women still face formidable barriers to entry to the corridors of power, Fisher told them that evolution has bequeathed to them natural advantages particularly pertinent to today's world. "For millions of years, women had to do many things at the same time," she said. "Men had to do one thing: hit the buffalo on the head with a rock."

That might have been a bit of hyperbole, but I didn't protest; I was in the (otherwise enviable) position of being vastly outnumbered by women over three days at the second annual Women's Forum for the Economy and Society. And Fisher has a good argument. Her broader point, laid out in a discussion of "the future of gender," is that modern humankind's inexorable movement away from farming has caused a slow sea change in women's role, pushing them out into the labor market almost everywhere.

Now that brawn and the ability to plough a straight furrow matter less than subtlety and networking, she says, "the job market is moving in a direction that needs the female mind." She cited evidence that the physical structure of the female brain enables greater tolerance of ambiguity, better social and language skills, and more mental flexibility — all key talents for mastering an increasingly cacophonous and interconnected world.

So has woman's time finally come? In France's febrile pre-election period, that question is usually tied to the fortunes of probable Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal. She was supposed to address the Forum along with her likely rival, conservative Nicolas Sarkozy. Both of them bailed out at the last minute, with Royal saying she'd prefer not to address "the happy few in a rich town." Forum founder and president Aude Zieseniss de Thuin scolded the candidates for their "unacceptable comportment."

But other politicians had their own tales to tell. U.S. Under Secretary of State Karen Hughes, who claimed that women are graced with "natural empathy," pointed out that eight of President George W. Bush's 18 senior staff members are women. On a panel shared with French Minister of Defense Michèle Alliot-Marie and Burundi's Minister of External Relations and Cooperation Antoinette Batumubwira, Kuwaiti Communications Minister Maasouma Al Moubarak captivated a crowd by recounting her 32-year battle to secure the vote for Kuwaiti women. "They insulted us that we weren't good Muslims," she said, "but we studied the Koran and saw that all their bluffing was lies." The Kuwaiti parliament finally gave women voting rights in May 2005, and the following month Al Moubarak was appointed minister. "Believe me," she said, "it's nice to be the first."