Girls will be girls. Or not

Why aren’t more powerful public women caught up in sex scandals?

Why aren’t more powerful public women caught up in sex scandals?

Catherine the Great was a woman with an extravagant, exacting sexual appetite. During her 34-year reign, she had a host of young, well-trained lovers—many of them soldiers—who were paid handsomely for sating her, and were often rewarded with plum positions on her court. They myth of her libido has endured and serves as a reminder of our fascination with powerful, sexual women: will they stop at nothing?

The question is, as another round of public sex scandals unfolds, where are these women today? The confessions of Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson—the man who, on the same day he replaced Spitzer, admitted to past affairs—pale when compared with tales of the Russian empress. Now, political scientists scratch their heads when asked to come up with a female equivalent for the men.

There have been only a handful of minor scandals involving women in public office in America, and most of them have been due to love affairs, not casual—or commercial—liaisons. In 1989, when Sue Myrick was running for re-election as mayor of Charlotte, N.C., she confessed to having had a relationship with her husband while he was still married to another woman in 1973. (She went on to win the election.) In 1998, shortly after US Rep. Helen Chenoweth, a Republican from Idaho, began airing anti-Clinton advertisements insisting “personal conduct does count,” she admitted to having had a six-year affair in the 1980s with a married man. In 2004, state Rep. Katherine Bryson of Utah was caught with a lover on a surveillance camera. (Internationally, one notable standout was an escapade in Taiwan, where tapes of politician Chu Mei-feng having sex with a married lover were leaked in 2001. She apologised and resigned.)

Hardly the stuff of tabloid dreams. Some women say the lack of scandal is another reason more women should be elected. Former White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers, author of Why Women Should Rule the World, says: “I’m confident predicting there would be fewer sex scandals if women were in power … I don’t think Hillary Clinton is going to be hitting on the intern.” But as morally superior as women are supposed to be, there is evidence to show they are led by their libidos, too: Prince Charles may have had Camilla, but Diana had plenty of lovers as well.

Why, then, are so few women in politics embroiled in tabloid tales? Some people insist it can be explained by basic biology. Feminist author Robin Morgan says men “stow their brains in their (underpants). Women do seem to approach work differently. And women tend to regard sex differently. They like to at least like the person.”

But surely part of the reason is that, historically, women who stray have suffered more than men who do. Men are often forgiven more easily. Gunnbjorg Lavoll, a psychiatrist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, says the assumption that men will be “naughty” is built into phrases like “boys will be boys.” “Do you hear ‘girls will be girls’?” asks Lavoll. “No. The social consequences for women are much harsher. What kind of woman would abandon her children?”

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When Edwina Currie, a British politician, disclosed a four-year affair with her Conservative colleague John Major in her 2002 Diaries, she was roundly condemned. So perhaps women are just being smart by avoiding, or concealing, illicit or abundant sexual activity. A harem of young soldiers might not be a huge advantage when it comes to Election Day.
-JULIA BAIRD (Newsweek )