Irrational Bloody Women

HEADLINE: Labor spellbound

BYLINE: Andrew Bolt

BODY:
Study after study shows that women tend to be more irrational than men. Why, then, does the ALP insist on a dangerous stacking of parliamentary benches with the sillier sex?

HERE'S one thing Labor did not dare discuss yesterday before deciding to shoehorn more women into Parliament.

Would having more women as politicians ensure Labor made more rational decisions, or less? Could passing a rule to reserve 40 per cent of Labor's safer seats for women in fact force on Labor a bunch of politicians who are too New Age?

I know, these are kamikaze questions. And that's probably why so many Labor men fell over themselves to back the new quotas for women at Labor's special rules conference on the weekend, rather than have their guts for Joan Kirner's garters.

Look at all the Labor premiers who quickly caved in to the quotas demanded by Kirner, a former premier herself and now head of the Emily's List lobby group for Left-wing women.

Victoria's Steve Bracks, Queensland's Peter Beattie and South Australia's Mike Rann -- and, of course, federal Opposition leader Simon Crean -- all backed the 40 per cent quota with huge squeaks, rather than defend the principle that ministers should be picked on their talent, not their genitals.

You probably don't need reminding why such quotas are sexist, or why they could lead to relatively ungifted women being chosen, given so many talented women, particularly mothers, actually prefer not to have full-on careers or buck-stops-here jobs.

But there's another factor we should consider, too, before deciding that putting more women in power must be better.

At this stage, cold sweat is running down my back.

So before I go on, let me say -- hoping for mercy -- that my mother worked, my wife works and my finger-wagging four-year-old daughter seems all set to become a High Court judge. And I'd love that.

I also know of women who have made great political leaders (Margaret Thatcher), great scientists (Marie Curie) and great columnists, too, for that matter (Peggy Noonan).

But it's also blindingly obvious that the long-repressed suspicions of many men have been spot on -- women are more likely to act irrationally. Statistics now confirm it. And do we really need more irrational politicians in charge?

Please don't hit me before I've shown you the evidence -- although it's evidence that shows no evidence will save me. Women will still beat me up, because my argument feels wrong.

A leading expert on witches, Canada's Professor Kathryn Morris, tells us that at least 75 per cent of witches in the past were women. The supernatural has always appealed to women more than to men.

A S it does today. Only last month, for instance, an Adelaide University study found that 60 per cent of Australian women -- but "only" 44 per cent of men -- now use alternative therapies.

It said women just loved herbs, oils, crystals, acupuncture, burning leaves, ginseng and eye of newt -- so much so that this country now spends four times more on this muck than it does on pharmaceuticals.

Newt wrong with that, you might say. Except for this: Unlike conventional medicines, these New Age therapies have never been proven to work, and users don't demand proof, either.

We're talking faith here, you see. Not reason.

Around the world, you'll find similar irrationality -- particularly among women.

In the United States, for instance, the New England Journal of Medicine reported a 1997 survey which showed nearly half the women in America used alternative therapies, but that only a third of the men did so.

A poll in Canada that year showed women there were also more likely than men to reach for the ylang ylang, the incense or the yoga mat.

And in all the studies I've mentioned -- and this is scary -- the better educated the women (and men), the more they turned to irrational therapies.

Heavens, we've even had the highly educated women of the Women's Electoral Lobby decorate their website in what they called "Wiccan pagan goddess-based colour symbolism". But don't think the greater tendency of women to act irrationally is shown only by their deeper faith in alternative medicine.

F OR example, the British Journal of Psychology in 1997 said women reported paranormal experiences more often than did men, which is what the Sociological Analysis journal had already noted in 1992.

I could sandpaper your eyeballs with gritty lists of more journals and studies to prove my point, but all the proof you probably need is at your local newsagent.

Just open the pages of New Idea, say, or some other popular women's mag, and see all the horoscopes and the pages of ads for astrologers, clairvoyants, feng shui experts and channellers who can put you in touch with your dead dog.

Now pick up any men's magazine. See anything like the same obsession with the paranormal?

Or check the shelves of a local bookshop. You'll find a book like Marina Laker's Spells for Teenage Witches, containing cures for period cramps, but no how-to manuals for teenage wizards. It's a girl thing, you see.

Case closed, I think. Pick a woman, and you run a comparatively higher risk that you've got yourself a superstitious New Ager, which is precisely the conclusion of a fascinating study last year by two Swedish researchers -- Lennart Sjoberg of the Stockholm School of Economics and Anders af Wahlberg of Uppsala University.

And what can we expect from a New Age politician?

These Swedes, having reviewed studies from around the world, tell us: New Agers are more prone to "wishful thinking", "seeing a cause where there is none", "faulty observation" and a "belief in what (they) see and feel".

More dangerously, they'll tend to show a "scepticism toward modern science and technology" and an irrational fear of useful things like nuclear power and genetically engineered crops.

And stand by. We're getting more and more female New Agers. Just check our latest census, which found the number of witches in Australia jumped more than four-fold in just six years.

YES, I know Joan Kirner would probably argue that such silly women would clearly not become ministers under her quotas.

Many women are perfectly rational (can I come home now, honey?), and certainly more so than some of the men who've hogged Labor's top jobs. I'm thinking here of Paul Keating, for instance, and Gough Whitlam.

And yet I can't help but notice that an old Labor colleague of Kirner's, former state MP Jean McLean, has studied witchcraft for years and has cast a spell to make the Bracks Government win the next election. And that Kate Carnell quit as Chief Minister of the ACT after advice from her clairvoyant.

All cute, of course, but should Labor increase the risk of inflicting on us more politicians with this kind of New Age irrationality?

For one thing, we've had enough ministers practise voodoo economics and do vanishing tricks with our money, without Labor putting a real witch in charge.

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