Let me be clear. I am not saying that women are not perfectly capable of realpolitik chess-game strategizing about how to best adversaries and counter potential threats in the world of state power. And some men, of course, do focus on a wide range of social, economic, and humanitarian issues. But many women are more likely than many men to see the world from the bottom up and connect the dots, for example, between America's living up to its word by preventing mass killing on a horrific scale in supporting the Libyan opposition against a murderous regime and beginning to change perceptions of the United States among young people not only in Libya but across the Middle East. And women add sheer diversity to the mix of issues we should rate as important; I well remember the horror of a male colleague at the idea that we would be working on food security, one of Clinton's priorities.
Biological and sociological explanations abound for these differences; time and neuroscience will tell. In the meantime, the president and the country would be better served if both perspectives were equally represented in any decision-making process. Judging from Foreign Policy's list of the top 50 foreign-policy Democrats, we have a problem. Below cabinet level, it is men who surround the president as foreign-policy advisors. Only one woman from inside the White House is even listed.
Formal position and actual influence are not the same thing, of course. Still, a bigger pool of eligible women would help. The core problem is that precisely when men in their early thirties are taking positions as National Security Council directors, speechwriters, or special assistants -- jobs that prepare them for more senior positions -- women are having children and stepping out, not up. Addressing that problem requires systemwide change. Ambitious parents need more flexibility in how, where, and when they work, including the ability to work less or even not at all for a period. Equally important, they will need employers -- starting with the president -- who don't view this kind of zigzag career path as a lack of commitment or professionalism, but instead value both their experience as parents and their determination to live up to the full range of their responsibilities.
From medicine to education, many young women are now choosing a career based in part on how family-friendly it is. Foreign policy does not rate highly on this score; by definition, it involves endless amounts of travel and a work schedule at the mercy of world events. That cannot be changed. But a lot of other things can be. If we want to see and solve the full range of national and global problems, rather than a selective and sometimes distorted set of them, it's time to make family and foreign policy work together.
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