When 'better angels of nature' lead

Would the world be more peaceful if women were in charge? A challenging new book by the Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker says that the answer is "yes".

In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Pinker presents data showing that human violence, while is still very much with us today, has been gradually declining. Moreover, he says, "over the long sweep of history, women have been and will be a pacifying force. Traditional war is a man's game: tribal women never band together to raid neighboring villages." As mothers, women have evolutionary incentives to maintain peaceful conditions in which to nurture their offspring and ensure that their genes survive into the next generation.

Skeptics immediately reply that women have not made war simply because they have rarely been in power. If they were empowered as leaders, the conditions of an anarchic world would force them to make the same bellicose decisions that men do. Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi were powerful women; all of them led their countries to war.