Are women better rulers than men? Essay

This argument on the question; are women better rulers than men? Will focus on the example of Elizabeth I compared to the average of male rulers. It mostly depends which era you live in, in modern times it would really not make much of a difference as both genders are considered equal. But in the Tudor era, looking at it from the present, a female would definitely have had the upper hand, but from the common perspective of people in the Tudor times a female would have been considered lower, for a number of reasons, the main one being, female rulers were supposed to have a husband to make the decisions for them, while the queen got on producing a male heir. Because it was lady-like in those times. The definition for lady-like then was to be quiet, sit in a corner be submissive to males and not be able to do any thing for themselves. That really did challenge Elizabeth in the start as her parliament kept pestering her toThere were a number of traits that Elizabeth also had that made her more successful than others. One of them was she was fluent in 6 languages; her native English, French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, and Latin. Later she came to terms with a bit of german. They became very useful to her in foreign plolitical situations such as when shemade an alliance with France. The St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, in which thousands of French Protestants (Huguenots) were killed, strained the alliance but did not break it. Elizabeth even began marriage negotiations with Henry, Duke of Anjou , and afterwards with his younger brother Franà §ois, Duke of Anjou and Alenà §on. Another was that she was a just ruler and upheld the law, when she wanted, she could be ruthless (such as when the earl of essex plotted to overthrow her she had him executed immediately)but at times she can be merciful (like when she captured her half sister mary she kept transferring her from keep to keep for 18 years until she ordered her execution. Although some say this was because she was waiting for enough evidence to execute her; if she executed her too early a lot of people would view her as a martyr). She was also very brave; at the beginning of the sapnish armada, when she was 55, she deleivered a speech to her men on horseback wearing light armour, with no guard or royal escort, only her pages. (some saw this as foolery)  She was also trained partially in fencing, as part of her fitness. Women didnt usually participate in any physical activity.she could also be very rude to noblemenShe also never married and is commonly called the virgin queen (there is some speculation about this) many say that not marrying was the key to her success, it meant that she had no loyalties to anyone but the people of england, but she did have the loyalties of many men who she kept flirting with letting them think they were all in with a chance of marrying her and so did almost everything she asked. This proved she was a talented manipulater. It is also said that she never married because she was mentally scarred from the treatment of her fathers wives and how he had beheaded hers and feared that the same might happen to her. Others say that she never married because she was deeply passionate about Robert Dudley and she could not marry him for a number of reasons cheifly because he was extremly unpopular with the parliament because his family was a long line of rogue nobles. Over all I think that elizabeth proved that women are very much better rulers than men as there is no other monarchs time of reign that was called THE GOLDEN AGE[1]. Bibliography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_I_of_England