sufficient conditions

Essential for You

Often writing prompts will ask , “What is essential to you?” Questions such as this, too often, elicit a short answers that are quite predictable. Family. Parents. Children. My church.

These are great answers, but somewhat uninformative. A conscious shift in perspective allows a more complete understanding of priorities in life.

When contemplating and recording such personal motivations I recommend taking your time and returning to this prompt over time so ideas develop as you contemplate them.

Essential for Others

The first thing I would have you ask of yourself is, are the things and actions (not the people) you believe are essential to you essential because you truly find them essential or because you have adopted someone else’s view of what is essential as your own. Women do this less than in the past but women often still put other’s needs above their own.

Clear yourself of what is essential to others and focus on what is essential to you to be what you want to be.

Do you fiercely want to write that memoir? Figure out what is necessary to make that dream become a reality. It may mean writing 4 hours every day, and giving up other things you now do, purchasing the software to proof your draft, saving funds for a an editor. This things may require you to shift away from perfection in tasks that others expect you to handle.

This is just one example, but if you monitor how you determine essentials, what you add and what you drop, then you have learned something about yourself, your values, and your desires that you can write about as part of your memoir.

Essential or Necessary

It may inform you and and your eventual reader to have a list of what was necessary to accomplish what is essential to you.

This list might reveal how you prioritize your life. Your necessities might include:

Morning meditation
Fountain pen
Chocolate snacks
Your favorite coffee to focus
Music to write by
A walk or run to energize you

Do these necessities all revolve around comfort and reward? What does that tell you?

Or if your list is immensely practical and made up of spare printer supplies, a seat at a co-working space, or finding just the right desk for your office, and a ticket to travel to a location to do research.

Giving yourself permission to figure out what is necessary and essential to you allows you to access the context of daily life and lifelong goals so that you can write beyond simple answers.

Sufficient

Sufficiency might also be something you want to throw in to your self-assessment prompt. Unmet needs and dreams are not pertinent to everyone. If you have lived long, and well, you might find you are content. If this fortunate circumstance is yours then you might want to figure out, and record, the sufficiencies in your life that have lead to contentment. These will be very different for each person. Unlocking your keys to contentment (not necessarily to happiness) are certainly worth sharing in a memoir.

Until women reach an equitable distribution in shared governance it is questionable whether a true democracy can exist.
I am writing about some of the considerations of how women’s wisdom might or does influence the development of democratic governance, not a critique of any one government nor any one poltical party. In fact, the article I read recently which motivated me to write this, The relationship between democracy and women participation in politics, in Journal of Public Administration and Governance provided an international perspective on the subject of women and democracy.
Gender equity in governance is not a sign of democracy, it is a goal of states that strive toward democracy.

What women’s wisdom brings to democratic efforts:

Cooperation

Women, whatever the reason, tend to create less hierarchical systems than men, and cooperative and collaborative structures are necessary in democratic governments.

Non-violence

Karl Popper described democracy as “a system that makes it possible to get rid of a government without spilling blood.”
Again, no reason is forwarded, but violent crimes, crimes that spill blood, tend to be perpetrated by men. Over 80% of violent crime in the U.S. is attributed to men, and 90% of all murders. However, when the violence is within the home or family, rates for women commiting violent acts increases significantly.

Rules

Democracy requires rules, usually a constitution, that specifies the essential rules for creation and maintenance of the democracy.
Women follow the rules more than men do. Again the why is up for debate, but we know that in corridors of power women are more severely punished for violation of rules than men, even though the transgretions may be identical to those of men. Women, with all other factors held equal, women break the rules at a much lower rate. The publication, Working Women, as well as Bloomberg, recently reported on the implications of the original study whose abstract (or summary) I recommend you read.

Voice

Democracy requires that the people have a voice in government. Women are more cooperative and more likely to engage with others in collaborative settings. So the character of representational government bodies may well take on a more talkative and personal nature when collaboration is expected and the governing body reflects the male/female ratio of society at large.
Do women talk more than men? Maybe yes, maybe no, but when the expectation is open to collaboration, women talk more and are more likely to talk in close proximity to each other. A paper in Nature reports these findings that were discussed in more generally accessible terms by Amanda Duberman in a Huffington Post article.
It is interesting to note that more women does not equal a more democratic institution. The first paper I mentioned at the beginning of this post highlights that autocratic governments actually have more women in governance than democratic institutions thus far in the world.
Women are necessary, but not sufficient, to democracy. First, there must be an expectation of collaboration, an adherence to the rules, and an expectation of non-violence, then we have a shot at a real democracy.

E is for Essential