How far can Donald Trump’s fake machismo go?

In our time, women have been gaining political power as never before. There are (by my count) 17 female presidents and prime ministers around the world today. Sixty-three of the world’s countries have now had at least one female head of government or state in the past half century.

But it’s not the fact of their being female that is important, so much as the feminine style today’s female leaders have brought to politics. The powerful women of the 1970s and 1980s – Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher – were iron ladies, famous (metaphorically speaking) for having more cojones than the average male politician. By contrast, the female leaders of our time are not just female; they are also feminine. The archetype is German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Now, when a man seeks to sum up feminine qualities, he is almost certain to be accused of sexism, so please read this trigger warning before you step out of your safe space. I believe in the equality of the sexes. And what I am about to say is not based on prejudice but on half a century of research.

What I have noticed is that, compared with me and my male relatives, my grandmothers, mother, sister, daughter, ex-wife and wife share or shared the following traits. They talk a lot more before arriving at decisions. They are mostly better at doing many different things at once. They are slightly less inclined to lose their tempers. And they have multiple handbags, the cluttered contents of which often seem as puzzling to them as they are to me.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel named Time magazine’s ‘Person of 2015’

Not all feminine traits translate into the realm of politics, but these do. Thus, Merkel’s political style combines the gift of the gab, multitasking, never losing her cool and a certain amount of tactical clutter.