The G20 summit

always seems to attract the rabble rousers...and I don't just mean the mob which protests.
The Senior Cat, a wise individual who gives much thought to many things, was pondering this yesterday.
     "I wonder," he asked me, "what would happen if all the wives met to solve the problems instead?"
Now you will have to excuse him, his generation thinks of partners as husbands and wives. Same sex? Doesn't bother him. 
But, the male-female divide. Yes, he sees a difference. He believes there are distinct differences in the way males and females handle things. He may be right. 
I was reminded again of something that happened to me in law school. One of the people I went to law school was a senator in the federal parliament. She was about to retire from politics and she was doing her degree, one subject at a time. I got on well with her. She is still a friend - as is the one on the opposite side of the political fence who held a similar portfolio.
But, we were sitting in the lecture theatre that day and the professor was talking about a case that had reached the courts and how the minister, whose judgment had been questioned, had come to the conclusion and why it was correct in law. She listened for a while and I could see her growing increasingly irritated and uncomfortable. 
Finally she muttered to me, "I can't stand this any longer." Then she spoke up and said, "The Minister is present and the Minister made the decision on the basis that she was and is a wife and a mother and that is what she would have wanted for her family."
Yes, the decision was the correct one in law - but it was also the correct one for other reasons. Now the Senator in question was a kind person. She had no intention of putting the lecturer down, particularly a professor who was likely to mark her examination papers. But she knew, better than he did, that making decisions isn't just about the law - or even staying in power.
The professor in question took it well. The following year when he had to teach the same case he, according to the students, included her remarks in his lecture.
Making decisions is about people.