Liz Truss is our new Prime Minister. A lot has happened in the short period since she took over the prime ministership and the party leadership so it might be easy to forget this fact. During her campaign the one word that I heard most bandied around was ‘tough’. And in the days following her appointment, there has been discussion of how her ‘tough image’ is what won her the election over Rishi Sunak. She has also been called ‘dynamic’ and ‘formidable’ by even some of her most reluctant supporters.
These are traditionally masculine attributes. I say traditionally because obviously there aren’t any typical masculine or feminine attributes. But, as I discuss in my book, Hysterical: Exploding the Myth of Gendered Emotions this is how our society has been set out since ancient times, a binary divide that establishes a hierarchy of which attributes are more desirable for a leader, and which attributes are inferior.
Bem Sex-Role Inventory, created by psychologist Sandra Bem in the 1970s, categorises descriptive language into masculine, feminine and neutral groupings based on how individual words are perceived by the public. Bem found that words like ‘ambitious’, ‘tough’ and ‘assertive’ have been associated with masculinity, while words such as ‘compassionate’ and ‘loyal’ have been associated with femininity. These gender-coded language and expectations create an intense polarisation in our society into ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’, which we have seen repeated throughout history, and that we perpetuate by statements such as ‘boys will be boys’ that are grounded in ideals of masculinity. This is where the phrase ‘sugar and spice’ emerges from, a persistence of duality from Aristotle’s and Plato’s times.
Alice Eagly, professor at Northwestern University, proposed the ‘social role theory’ in 1987 to show that women are disadvantaged by the gap that exists between the stereotypes associated with them and the expectations and norms ascribed to the role of a manager or leader. Women are stereotyped as having less leadership potential simply because of their gender (‘descriptive bias’), but also leadership is seen as a masculine role, so women are seen less favourably because they are violating both the norms associated with their gender, as well as the social role they are taking on. For women to be perceived as an effective leader they have to show both sensitivity and caring (‘feminine’ emotions), as well as authority and risk-taking (‘masculine’ emotions) to avoid prejudice. Incongruous social roles (women as leaders) evoke hostility and negative reactions, while congruous roles (men as leaders) evoke more positive reactions.
Women in politics have always faced this bias where they have to navigate a very thin tricky line between the expectations around a good leader and the stereotypes and expectations from women. Former Prime Minister of the UK Margaret Thatcher was called ‘the Iron Lady’ to highlight her unique mix of strength and femininity, which might otherwise have been considered mutually exclusive. My work as a consultant with global organisations has revealed that women have to appear to imbibe masculine attributes and emotionalities such as toughness and assertiveness in order to be taken seriously in a leadership campaign, but at the same time they cannot step too far from a traditionally feminine framework of being warm and likeable. If they transgress these boundaries too much, they are penalised for it too. The defeat of Clinton by Trump showed that not only are women leaders judged by how we think about them, but also by how we ‘feel’ about them.
While there were many other factors that counted against Hillary Clinton, one of the major ones was ‘unlikability’, even amongst women. In one poll of around 5,000 adults, more than 54 per cent of the respondents said that their opinion of her was unfavourable. In November 2016, more than 61 percent of 4,183 adults gave her a likeability rating of less than 50 degrees (where 0 degrees was cold and negative and 100 was warm and positive). Although a Pew Research Center poll in October 2016 showed that 62 per cent of the respondents agreed that Clinton was well-qualified to serve as President, just 54 per cent of women voted for her, and even fewer white women did (45 percent of white women for Clinton, as opposed to 98 percent of black women).
Clinton was regularly called unemotional, lacking warmth and empathy and ice-cold. In a ‘Humans of New York’ interview, Clinton admitted that she would love to show passion, to raise her voice, to wave her arms, but she can’t because she gets scrutinised for it and ‘apparently that’s a little bit scary to people. And I can’t yell too much. It comes across as “too loud” or “too shrill” or “too this” or “too that”.’ Women, even when they are powerful and hold status, do not have much space to express their emotions. Women who display strong emotions are seen to be violating feminine norms, especially if they are in the public domain and especially if they are vying for leadership. Either way, it becomes clear that women are scrutinised and penalised for their emotions, and for their apparent inability to control them.
Other adjectives attributed to Truss have been ‘straight talking’ and ‘not a ditherer’. Self-effaciveness is perceived as a good quality for women and makes them more likeable and hireable. In a 1990 study it was shown that men liked and trusted women leaders more if they spoke tentatively, using ‘tag questions’ (statements that end in short questions with a rising or falling pitch, perceived to be signs that the speaker is looking for assurance and is not very sure of themselves) and hedging (words or phrases that makes a statement appear vague and less forceful, such as ‘somewhat’, ‘sort of’, etc). Men’s tentativeness did not affect their influence either way. surprisingly even less so by other women.
It has been interesting to see the way Truss has modelled herself on a traditionally masculine template in order to appeal to the voting conservative MPs, and possibly to the general public. I have not seen much discourse around her agreeability or likeability in the media, but a recent UK gov.uk survey shows that few expect Liz Truss to be a good Prime Minister, or even an improvement over Boris Johnson. Only 12% of Britons expect that Truss will be a great or good Prime minister, with half (52%) expecting her to be poor or terrible. Even conservative voters consider Truss to be a downgrade from Johnson: 43% think she will be worse, more than twice the number who think she will be better (20%). It is hard to imagine how much worse anyone could be compared to Johnson but here we are. Compared to other recent prime ministers, Truss is seen as likely to do worse than all of them.
Even with all the political disasters we saw in the previous prime ministership, I find it fascinating to note that Truss is considered only a very marginal improvement over Johnson in terms of decisiveness and competence, the idealised qualities for a good leader. Johnson and Truss are tied on strength, but even at this very early stage, and when people admit to not knowing her very much, she comes far behind in terms of likeability. In principle, they might be proven right with this one - I am not refuting it - but that it is fascinating that she is less likeable than someone who is accused of breaking several lockdown rules, and who is widely considered to be very low on empathy and compassion for the general public who died in huge numbers during the pandemic.
And when compared to Keir Starmer, Truss finds herself behind on competence and likeability, while proving little better in terms of strength or decisiveness.
The notion of agreeability has become somewhat diminished in the recent political era but it would be interesting to note whether Truss is able to get away with some of the similar behaviours that our former Prime Minister was regularly excused for. It is to be seen how Truss balances these gendered expectations once she is in position, and how media – and the rest of the party- will react once they decide that Truss is not likeable or agreeable enough.
Whatever our political affiliation, it is interesting to see how words and language play a role in creating leaders, in determining who is seen to be a good leader and who is not. We are still using the yardstick that men make better leaders, and women have to always be second best, even when the bar is set extremely low for everyone.
Prof Pragya Agarwal is the author of Hysterical: Exploding The Myth Of Gendered Emotions, which is out now.