Iron Ladies

Put Hegseth in a room with any of them and he’d emerge whimpering

We’re not the only ones who’ve commented on Pete Hegseth and his performative masculinity.

We’d guess that he’s covering for being in over his head in a job he’s deeply unqualified for. A trillion-dollar budget and nearly 3 million employees being run by a former weekend news commentator who once commanded a platoon in the Army (see our “The Little Corporal Redux.”)

“Department of War” not “Defense.” Fired the Navy’s first female four-star admiral and the Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Pulled Black and female officers off a promotion list.

Now testing everyone’s testosterone levels.

Hegseth apparently hasn’t read much history or he’d realize that there have been some real badass women leaders in the past:

• Margaret Thatcher (United Kingdom) - “Iron Lady” who served as Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990, reshaping the British economy and leading the UK through the 1982 Falklands War.

• Indira Gandhi (India) - India’s Prime Minister for fifteen years across two tenures (1966-1977 and 1980-1984), known for her commanding leadership during the 1971 war with Pakistan.

• Golda Meir (Israel) - The original “Iron Lady” - the nickname predates Thatcher’s by a decade - she served as Israel’s Prime Minister from 1969 to 1974, a formidable leader who guided the country through the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

• Angela Merkel (Germany) - Germany’s Chancellor from 2005 to 2021 and de facto leader of the EU through the 2008 financial crash and 2015 migrant crisis.

If you go further back, you have:

• Boadicea (Boudica) - Warrior queen of the Celtic Iceni tribe who led a fierce rebellion against Roman rule in Britain around 60-61 CE, burning Roman London to the ground.

• Queen Victoria - Ruled the United Kingdom from 1837 to 1901, presiding over the height of the British Empire.

• Cleopatra VII (Egypt) - Last ruler of Egypt’s Ptolemaic Kingdom, who used political skill and alliances with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony to protect her kingdom.

• Joan of Arc (France) - Teenage peasant who became a military commander and led French armies to key victories during the Hundred Years’ War.

• Catherine the Great (Russia) - Empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796 who seized power in a coup and went on to expand and modernize the empire.

• Queen Elizabeth I (England) - England’s “Virgin Queen,” who ruled 44 years and defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588.

Focusing on the Wrong Thing

A testosterone requirement will produce a high-testosterone force - but is that a good thing in modern warfare? If Hegseth had studied this even a little, he’d know that elevated testosterone is linked to more impulsiveness and less strategic thinking, hardly ideal traits as warfare shifts toward drones and other remote systems.

And the research doesn’t back the premise that men are better suited to that shift.

Studies of UAV operators find no gender gap in demanding surveillance and weapons-release tasks once baseline gaming or flight-simulation experience is controlled for, and no link between gender and stress resilience. The same holds for competitive video games: male and female players in games like League of Legends level up at the same rate, and after just 10 hours of training, the historical gender gap in spatial-attention tasks like mental rotation largely disappears. In short, the “male advantage” is mostly accumulated hours, not biology - level the experience, and the gap levels too.

History’s Iron Ladies didn’t out-testosterone anyone - they out-thought them. If the future of warfare runs on drones and data instead of muscle in the trenches, the DOD might spend less time checking hormone levels and more time checking who’s actually best at the job.