JOIN USChristine Lagarde, voted Europe’s top finance minister by Financial Times last year, said that her 30-year career as a high-flying lawyer left her convinced that men’s ego, sex drive and testosterone made them prone to taking decisions personally and humiliating people.
Most women in power, on the other hand, were less ruled by their libido and thus able to make more cool-headed judgments, The Daily Telegraph quoted the 54-year-old minister as saying.
“Women inject less libido and less testosterone into the equation. It helps in the sense that we don’t necessarily project our own egos into cutting a deal, making our point across, convincing people, reducing them to a partner that has lost in the process,” Lagarde said.
Lagarde, the world’s 43rd most powerful woman according to Forbes, added: “It’s probably overgeneralised what I’m saying and I’m sure there are women who operate exactly like men. But in the main... I honestly believe that the majority of women in such positions approach power in a slightly different manner.”
Lagarde was voted Europe’s top finance minister by the Financial Times last year for her handling of the global financial crisis. She took a sevenfold salary cut when she gave up her job as chairwoman of Baker and McKenzie, the international law firm, to become French external trade minister in 2005 before President Nicolas Sarkozy picked her as the country’s first ever female finance minister.