WHAT is the difference between men and women presidents, between male and female prime ministers? Have men an instinctive feel for leadership? Do women who achieve positions of power do the jobs any differently? Does their place at the top mean that your life or mine is any sweeter?
If we had more women in top government jobs, would we attain an end of century Camelot where the sun would always shine, the rain would come on demand and the Packards of, this world would merrily spin out jobs into eternity? Are women spurred to the top table by saintly vision and men, by greed and ambition? Are such absolutist comparisons daft?
The truth is that unless you are some kind of seer, you do not know. Neither do I. However, by this time next week I will have some notion of the mindsets of a variety of women who are, or were, at the very top in countries from Ireland to France and Turkey.
Starting on Sunday evening in Stockholm is an International Women's Leadership Forum which, according to its sponsors (the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington) "will promote the effective exercise of leadership by women on community, national and international levels . . . the forum will accomplish this through its agenda by addressing challenges to leadership, questioning assumptions and creating new paradigms".
You could be cynical and say women who put on major conferences always use little used words ("paradigms" instead of "models" or "examples") and that little but hot air comes out of such seminars which are usually held in lavish hotels or conference centres with all the women in female versions of tuxedos.
You could. This time last week I might have, but after speaking to Laura Lisewood my sceptical soul is churning away with fresh life, vigour and hope.
Lisewood, an American, is one of the main inspirations for this conference. In 1993-1994 she filmed interviews with 15 current and former heads of state and government. The CSIS people say it was the accumulated experiences of these leaders that gave them the idea for a forum where they could exchange experiences and expertise.
We often hear, but not enough, of the isolation experienced by successful women operating in a man's world. We hear of the need for us to support them. We all know you will hear praise or criticism of successful women's clothes before remarks on what they have actually said.
Lisewood says Edith Cresson, the former French prime minister, was one of her subjects who spoke strongly on this. "She felt that when the person, the politician, is a woman, she is overly scrutinised as a person rather than for her policies." This was repeated by many more of the 15.
Cresson will be in Stockholm as will Eugenia Charles, former prime minister of Dominica, who told Lisewood that "men can say almost anything but everything articulated by a woman is over examined". In the same series the President, Mrs Robinson, said that in jobs such as politics there is not the same level of mediocrity among women as there is among their male colleagues. Or as Naomi Wolf, the writer, says in Fire with Fire: "There will never be real equality until we have equality of mediocrity". The interviews will be shown next Monday, the first full day of the conference which continues until Tuesday night.
Lisewood feels that one of the most common themes in her series of interviews was the depth of the "double standard" that applies to women. "It is almost as if the threat posed by them is great, there is less analysis of what they do, what they stand for and more comment".
Mrs Robinson, who will also be in Stockholm, is probably the most shining example of a woman walking into a job that had lingered in a vacuum for too long and turned it around in so many full circles that The Job In The Park will never, ever be the same again. You look at the television and wonder no more that she is in one continent one week and in another the next, taking in a few local openings and launchings while getting a change of clothes. And oddly, in a country like Ireland, where we all love to begrudge, the President has turned more than a few political cartwheels - if not to the sound of music, then at least to a sort of be the holy, wait and see sort of silence.
LAURA Lisewood agrees that we simply can not tell, with any certainty, whether women would make a better world than men or would change it significantly. "There are so few women at that level of power and experience that it is impossible to say. Until we have at least 75 out of the 185 or so world premiers, we do not have a critical mass. We can speculate, but we can not say."
Lisewood, interviewed Baroness Thatcher who, alas, will not be in Stockholm. I do not care if she did it all the wrong way - the view of most women, who believe she showed how a woman can be more like a man; that she kept other women out of the cabinet room and was guilty of endless other things such as decimating the welfare state. I still think Margaret Hilda is a star who did it in her own inimical way. Why is there the notion that she never felt the burn? That she never wept over the reviews? That she was simply an iron lady without a flicker of emotion? And if she was, is not that interesting?
Tansu Ciller, former prime minister of Turkey will be there, along with Maria Liberia Peters, former PM of the Netherlands and Hanna Suchocka former PM of Poland and the President of Iceland, and Vigdis Finnbogadottir, another Icelander and the first elected woman president. Others include the speaker of the Swedish parliament, Ms Birgitta Dahl, along with other senior women politicians from Africa, South America and Hong Kong and many women from agencies, such as the World Bank, from multinational companies, and academic's and others.
While writing this, I took a break in the smoking room where one of the smoke police had left a magazine, back end up, saying "Smokers Die Younger". Before chucking it in the bin, I turned to the front cover to read the blurb for a story inside. It read: "How do you get to the top in Ireland - work hard or dye your hair blonde?" C'est la vie.
