The nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court has offered at least one lesson on gender stereotypes.
In case you missed it, Senator Lindsey Graham (South Carolina) has implied that Judge Sotomayor may be a “bully judge” and, referring to her demeanor, says, “There’s a character problem; there’s a temperament problem.” He has questioned her fitness for the High Court based on those characteristics.
Temperament may be a fair criterion on which to assess the fitness of a Supreme Court nominee. But if so, are we using the same standards for men and women in assessing temperament?
Apparently not, according to a June 15 story on National Public Radio. Journalist Nina Totenberg did more than report what supporters and detractors say about Sotomayor’s temperament. She and her team listened to oral arguments in two cases for which Sotomayor was one of the sitting judges. For the first case, Totenberg tallied the number of questions and interruptions made by Sotomayor and her colleagues during presentations by the opposing lawyers. Sotomayor asked 5 questions, and her colleagues an average of 4.7. She interrupted the lawyers 7 times, and her colleagues an average of 5.1. (Totenberg points out that Sotomayor was participating by teleconference, and it was clear that some of her interruptions were the result of not being able to hear.) For the second case, Totenberg compared the tenor of Sotomayor’s questions with those of sitting Supreme Court justices. She concluded that Sotomayor’s questions were tough but that her cross-examinations of lawyers were no more or less aggressive than those typical of Justices John Roberts and Antonin Scalia.
We are left to ask, then, what is the real basis for criticism of Sotomayor’s temperament. It’s not hard to figure out: women in leadership face a double standard in which assertiveness is perceived as aggressiveness and decisiveness as domineering behavior. It’s the same double standard applied to Hillary Clinton during her Presidential campaign and countless other women leaders. Of course, if women leaders are not assertive or decisive, they then are called weak. It’s the temperament trap, in which sexist labels are applied to strong women leaders that would never be applied to men who perform similarly.
What’s the lesson? Perhaps we should react a bit more skeptically the next time someone tells us that they find a certain female leader or manager unfriendly, overbearing, or hard to work with. We might ask, “Would you make the same observation about her behavior if she were a man?” “How does her behavior compare with that of men in her position?” and, most important, “Is she effective?” (which is often the only criterion used to judge the character of men in leadership).
That conversation might help clarify where the problem really lies.
Steve
