Saturday, August 13, 2005

gender and leadership

Venture Capitalist and author Guy Kawasaki wrote in the Art of the Start that a major problem of many start-ups is that they are dominated by men and that is a problem. Men are by nature too aggressive and want to defeat and kill things … In companies he funds, he makes them hire women if they don’t have any into senior leadership positions to help negate the testosterone and learn to build partnerships instead of trying to kill every wooly mammoth that we see walk down the street.

Link

Posted by steve at 05:20 PM

7 Comments

  1. Faececious wit: But what about MS – the most (financially) successful company in the world was started by two or three men.

    Altho I do recall NASA doing a study that identified the importance of femal members of space flight teams for similar reasons to these – any long term missions to Mars or beyond would include women for reasons of testosterone.

    Comment by Randall — August 15, 2005 @ 8:46 am

  2. this seems to tie into your talk about your biblical hero joanna. It goes back to the question “should women be in leadership?” and i think personally that they should, but to be honest, in my opinion, God made women and men as seperate people, and tho we are equal, we do have different tasks God has set us in life. So i think that women should be in leadership, but that there should be a higher figure that is a male. if that makes sense. Eg, Amy should be a leader, because she is really good at it, but steve (you) are still influencing how she teaches us as a leader. And that is why i agree with the American rule that only a man can become president, because for such a position of power God has appointed man. but feel free to disagree, im sure people will

    Comment by rayd — August 15, 2005 @ 6:18 pm

  3. So, actually, you don’t think men and women are equal, since clearly Amy, being a women, is not capable of leadership by virtue of the fact she is a women – she needs a man to watch over and direct her.

    And, similarly, women aren’t capable of being the president of America simply because they’re women.

    Although, you are incorrect , a woman could become president of the USA, at least in theory. There is no ‘rule’ about it.

    Comment by sharyn — August 17, 2005 @ 2:23 pm

  4. thats not what i mean. What i’m saying is that men and women are both equal, but they are so in different ways. God made men better at some things than women and women better at others than men. Amy certainly is capable of being a leader, and she is one, a very good one. But God has set each of us tasks to glorify him differently. How i see it anyway is that women are moreso likely to conform to other ideas, and look at different approaches to how the bible can be interpreted and are therefore more likely to eisegesise or misinterpret the bible for how they want it to be.

    “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.”
    1 Timothy 2:12-14

    Looking at different approaches is not necessarily a bad thing but it can lead to misinformation. How many women ministers stand up against the idea that the 6days was really billions of years? You will find few. And maybe you are right that men being in higher statuses are making us unequal. So maybe it should be that where ever there is a leader/paster/minister, man or woman, there should be the other (man/woman) so that they can both use their gifts from God in order to make sure the Bible is seen from both perspectives and exegesised correctly….Or i could be right out of my mind.

    in answer to your president rule. i did previously think that to be president you had to be male, and you had to be a US born citizen, but after looking into it, i found you were right and that the only requirements were that u have to be a US resident for atleast 14years, you must be US born, must be atleast 35years of age, and born in a region where the constitution has been signed. So i’m sorry i was wrong

    Comment by rayd — August 17, 2005 @ 3:46 pm

  5. Andrew and Sharyn, I appreciate both of you being willing to speak your minds. As/if this conversation continues, can I ask we focus on the issue, not the person, and so if this could include leaving names out of it (ie Amy) I would be glad.

    Andrew, good on you for apologising re the President. A question; if you use 1 Timothy 2:12 literally, don’t you then have run into problems with v.15 – where woman are saved through childbirth; which leaves open the question of how “literally” women who don’t have children are saved?

    I like your suggestion (if I hear you rightly) of a team approach, which recognises that we all have different strengths and weaknesses, and thus we all bring wisdom and unique insight to our reading of the Biblical text.

    Comment by steve — August 17, 2005 @ 4:01 pm

  6. Oh, one of my favourite topics. In the interests of briefness I will just say that I believe from my reading of the bible that Men should be in leadership over women – like Andrew’s description. That is what I believe marriage is about – complementing each other and working as a team. My issue with my belief system comes when there is a woman who is unmarried – should she then be counted out of leading. I have no problem whatsoever with women leading but I believe they should always be under the covering of a male and I do believe this is scriptual.
    As far as the verse about being ‘saved’ in childbirth I don’t think this is refering to our ‘salvation’ but to being delivered (not dying). God has promised he will be with women during childbirth and will take care of them.

    Comment by Karen — August 18, 2005 @ 9:18 pm

  7. I agree with Karen, i can only assume that by verse 15 it means not dying a physical death so long as the woman is faithful, loving, honest and modest. Although only God can know the true meaning of his word, just as only us (God exclusive) can know the true meaning behind what we say and therefore only when we enter heaven and ask God of all the things we got wrong in our lives, will we truly know.

    Comment by rayd — August 19, 2005 @ 4:09 pm

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