“I’m the Secretary of State, not Bill.”

You probably would remember Hillary Clinton’s sudden outburst at a press conference at a university in the Democratic Republic of Congo a few months ago, when she was asked by a student what her husband Bill Clinton thinks about Chinese financial contracts with Congo.


“You want me to tell you what my husband thinks?” Hillary snapped, “My husband is not the secretary of state, I am.”


It turns out the question may have gotten lost in translation. The student approached Clinton afterward and apologized, saying he had meant to ask what President Obama thought about the issue.


Although it baffles me as to how “President Obama” could be mistranslated to “President Clinton”, this incident certainly highlights the serious consequences when two parties – in this case three – are lost in translation. Of greater significance, however, and in line with Wednesday’s lecture on Cross-Gender Interaction, this manifests an apparent change in women’s roles in cross-gender discourse today. Apart from Hillary Clinton, women with an “increasingly audible voice” include the likes of Michelle Obama, Angela Merkel and Indra Nooyi, as more of them take up major positions in the political and corporate arenas.


While men may start to feel threatened by this change, I believe it will bring us more good than bad. As both sexes are given an equal opportunity to speak, the world will be able to receive a more balanced mix of ideas and viewpoints from both sexes. Based on scientific research, women are predominantly “right-brainers” whereas men are predominantly “left-brainers”; the two sexes process information very differently. In an experiment conducted recently, a group of men and women, of approximately equal level of intelligence, were asked to solve a problem. While they did so, their brains were scanned, such that the amount of activity on each side of the brain can be tracked. The findings are that though they both come up with the same correct answer, the manner in which they do so is different. Thus, as more women speak up, we will have a diversity of perspectives towards different issues. When it comes to solving some of the world’s most difficult problems such as poverty, racism and climate change, it seems that humanity has received a bigger helping hand from the women than from the men.


Nonetheless, I strongly believe that the voice of men is far from fading or of less importance. The world will continue to be mesmerized by the strength and charisma of the voices of Barack Obama, Steve Jobs and Martin Luther King, Jr. In fact, the increasingly audible voice of women is likely to spur men to be even better speakers. I am definitely looking forward to see how this “competition” will bring out the best from both sexes.