Women and Game of Politics
The following is an excerpt from a commentary by Alyssa Rosenberg in the Washington Post:
Game of Thrones has been leaning into the idea that if women got power in Westeros and Essos, the world might be run a little differently.
The show has been unsparing in its depiction of the bad decisions made by men in charge, from King Aerys’s (David Rintoul) genocidal madness to Stannis Baratheon’s (Stephen Dillane) rigid fanaticism. By contrast, Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) has led her dragons on a march through Essos freeing slaves.
Dany’s family was murdered, except for a brother who sold and abused her, and she has no tolerance for people who want to do the same on a societal scale. Sansa Stark was repeatedly raped and tortured by Ramsay, who, as her husband, owned her.
Their reactions are consistent with contemporary political science research, some of which suggests female leaders get more hawkish as they climb in government.
One study, notes Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones in Changing Differences: Women and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy, 19171994, found “the consistent 8-9 per cent gender gap that has made women as a whole more peaceful than men in their approach to foreign policy since the 1960s. But, on the basis of their survey of women’s views within the departments of state and defence, the authors concluded that the gender gap was much less evident in the case of insiders.”
Wags may have compared Hillary Clinton to Dany after she scorched Donald Trump and laid out a hawkish foreign policy vision. The parallels are apt: if Clinton wins the presidency and advances familyfriendly social policies, she may do so by convincing voters she would be tougher abroad than her male competitors.
“(The researchers) suggested that . . . empowered women were prepared to play the same game as men,” Jeffreys-Jones continued. On Game of Thrones, that means elite women might have to consume cities in fire and blood to project the strength that will allow them to lead.