Nicegate? It’s not nice for women

● Some scandals don’t ever go away. Watergate is the most famous example. In 1972, Republican Party stooges broke into the Watergate Hotel and Office Building in Washington DC and stole documents from the Democratic National Committee in a bid to bolster Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign, but their bungled attempt at chicanery instead brought him tumbling down.

Post-Watergate, every mishap, catastrophe, calamity and faux pas has had “gate” tacked onto its rear end, including the Washington DC antics of Neanderthals in January 2021, dubbed “Capitolgate”.

There are probably scores of millennials and Generation-Z-ers who have no idea why “gate” is the suffix of choice for Bad Stuff, but they use it anyway.

In SA, Sisulugate is unlikely to have the lasting impact of Watergate. There is still the question of Lindiwe Sisulu’s future status in government to be decided, in the wake of what some have referred to as her insurrectionist statements, but most members of the public, as far as I can tell, have grown bored and moved on (or back) to complaining about Eskom and the weather.

There is something else to think about in relation to Ms Sisulu, however, or rather to the reaction her delinquency elicited.

Without in any way excusing her, it is worth asking: would such vitriol and bile have been hurled at a man who made the same anti-constitution utterances?

There is a special fury reserved for women, particularly powerful women, who incur the wrath of the people, or at least some of the people. There are many examples. Margaret Thatcher. Sarah Palin. Aung San Suu Kyi. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. Greta Thunberg. Meghan Markle. Ghislaine Maxwell. Thandiwe Newton.

Some of these women deserve censure; others do not. What they have in common is that they are women, and while men might be criticised for their actions, when a woman does something loud or horrific there is a sense of horror and outrage of far more magnitude than when a man does something similar.

Writing for Forbes, Dr Pragya Agarwal, author of SWAY: Unravelling Unconscious Bias, analysed how stereotypical perceptions affect female leaders.

She writes: “Women are traditionally expected to be caring, warm, deferential, emotional, sensitive, and so on, and men are expected to be assertive, rational, competent and objective. So, when it comes to promotion ... a man, in general, is assumed to be a better fit as a leader.”

On the other hand, when women display “male” traits such as decisiveness, they can be penalised. As Agarwal puts it: “Men do not face the same problem, because what is considered ‘bossy’ in a woman are considered leadership qualities in a man.”

Perhaps we expect men to be rude or in some way morally deficient and are surprised when women behave in this manner. This is itself a form of misogyny. Just because women are women does not make them perfect and infallible.

People can be more forgiving of women as well as more judgmental. A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that organisations led by women were judged less harshly for business failures, but when that failure was ethical (as in corruption), women-led businesses were condemned by consumers to a far greater extent than those headed by men.

Dr Nicole Votolato Montgomery of the University of Virginia, lead author of the study, wrote: “Women incur greater penalties for ethical transgressions because of persistent gender stereotypes that tend to categorise women as having more communal traits than men, such as being more likeable, sensitive and supportive of others. Even in leadership settings, women are still expected to be more communal than their male counterparts.”

It’s nice to be thought of as nice, but this is still blatant sexism. It also explains why some powerful women go to extreme lengths to prove they are not “nice girls”.

There are good women and there are bad women, and power can corrupt women just as absolutely as it can men.

The moral of the story, I suppose, is that we should be aware of these unconscious biases and erroneous judgments. When it comes to women, don’t expect them to be saints, and don’t burn them at the stake when they turn out not to be.