Alright, so here is what we lose when we cut women out of decision making and leadership in general, but specifically related to crime and public safety. Tl;dr misogynistic violence drives both crime AND our responses to crime and it’s making life worse for St. Louisans https://twitter.com/senatornasheed/status/1354993352404574208

Even though my career is marked my promoting women in leadership I’ve become super skeptical of blanket approaches about women because people’s politics matter. But something that continues to matter is the fact that leadership styles are gendered.

In other words, people who study what makes leaders effective know that what helps systems and orgs make better decisions are approaches to governance that we attribute to women. For example, more democratic and inclusive approaches, coalitions and shared credit, etc.

It’s not just that this stuff makes people feel good and included; it’s that evidence suggests our decisions are better - meaning they actually work - when we make them in particular ways. So women leaders matter for decision making, or more accurately, leading “like a woman”

Our top prosecutor in the city is a woman. Aside from the technical error of leaving out someone who has a budget and the power to get done what you’re talking about part of what makes Gardner successful is the fact that she’s more likely to do her job in specific, effective ways

Why does this *especially matter* when we are talking about crime? Frankly, men are more likely to respond to violence and crime with violence and aggression. That is...counterintuitive. The same way we know that spanking doesn’t work.

The same way that we know that incarceration in violent settings that don’t focus on rehabilitation and restoration are actually bad for people we lock up.

Restitution for victims and rehabilitation for perpetrators requires “nontraditional” approaches - which is a weird thing to say because many of these approaches align with the civil rights movement and second wave feminism. So we are talking decades. But not widely embraced.

Think about something as straightforward as parenting. Let’s say your kid is getting pushed around by a bully. A male parent is more likely to tell the kid to fight back. A female parent is more likely to approach diplomacy, understanding, getting help.

(This is clinical observation and research I’m not talking about what you did with your kids or how you turned out okay. I know )

Anyway, misogynistic ideals like entitlement, superiority, and domination inform our responses to crime and wrongdoing in general, on small and large scales. And it doesn’t work. It doesn’t give victims or perpetrators of crime what they need. That’s the point.

What feels MOST glaring to me though is that woman are victims of crime. Very particular crime, driven by misogynistic violence. Rape, sexual assault, and murder at the hands of partners. All driven by misogyny.

Studies suggest that if you look at female homicide victims, about half of them die at the hands of an intimate partner or some type of “private violence.” So one way to look at this is if we can figure out how to end domestic violence we can nearly END femicide. That’s nuts.

Why does this matter for an all male panel on crime? Perpetrators of misogynistic violence are almost all male. Aaaaand there’s, shall we say, an over representation of perpetrators of that violence in law enforcement.

Right.

So we’ve got a panel full of folks that 1) unlikely to experience the violence, 2) are more likely to perpetrate the violence (in general, I don’t know these people, I’m sure they’re lovely and peaceful), and 3) come up with solutions that don’t address root causes

When a woman is murdered it’s not *just* a murder. It’s likely the culmination of years of escalating violence that has been ignored or mischaracterized by law enforcement and maybe even her community. And their may be a family and children left in the wake.

(Who dominates agencies full of helping professionals that get resources for those children and families? Not men!)

Does it matter that this panel of black people is having a discussion about crime and law enforcement? Yes. Does it matter that none of them are women? It matters A LOT.

Happy Friday I guess