<p>Spitzer, McGreevy, Larry Craig, Mark Foley, Bill Clinton, are from all over the political spectrum. But they are all males. Anyone hear of a female politician getting in trouble for sexual indiscretions? Is it just a matter of time?</p>
<p>Well, unfortunately since there are some very high profile examples of female teachers getting involved in sexual indiscretion (breaking the law with minors) I think it’s only a matter of time.</p>
<p>Catherine the Great?</p>
<p>Im also aware of some of the teacher’s who’ve been “caught”, but most women I can think of don’t have the TIME to arrange and participate in these activities!</p>
<p>I think women politicians would be more inclined to have an affair, if they were so inclined, rather than hire a male prostitute.</p>
<p>Yeah, we’re tight with money</p>
<p>I think affair is cheaper. 
Just do the math, $5000/hr times 10 hours, there goes one year of college tuition.</p>
<p>The reason that the stories about the female teachers having relationships with students get so much press is because they are so rare! I don’t think it’s unusual that so many of these stories involve males. Men make up a majority of politicians and married men are generally believed to be twice as likely to have an affair as married women. The other issue, pertinent to today’s story, is that prostitute’s clients are men, not women.</p>
<p>Elizabeth I.</p>
<p>To this day, we don’t know what really happened, but the talk was as juicy as anything circulating today.</p>
<p>I can’t speak to the scandals that involve gay relationships, but speaking strictly of heterosexual scandals, I think that there is probably something hardwired into men in positions of power that motivates them to seek more than one mate.</p>
<p>In cultures where having more than one woman in your life simultaneously is socially acceptable, it is the richer and more powerful men who do it. They’re the only ones who can support multiple wives or a wife and mistress simultaneously. And, since having more than one woman in your life means that you can father more children, it actually makes biological sense for a man to do it. Passing on your genes to many offspring is the biological definition of success; why wouldn’t a successful man try to pass on his genes to more offspring by establishing relationships with more than one woman?</p>
<p>The biological imperative is different for women – even women in power. We can only be pregnant a limited number of times, so we maximize our reproductive success through the quality of the mates we select, rather than the quantity. Moreover, most women in positions of political power are beyond reproductive age, so biological imperatives may not play as much of a role in their sexual decision making as they probably do for men of the same age.</p>
<p>In my opinion, there has got to be something biological involved here. I see no other reasonable explanation for why brilliant men like Gary Hart and Bill Clinton would get themselves caught up in something as seemingly stupid as “zipper problem” scandals.</p>
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<p>Maybe it’s not the men, it’s some hardwired in women to be attracted to rich powerful men.</p>
<p>Probably both. Women may be hardwired to be attracted to men who would help to provide well for their children, thereby increasing the children’s chances of survival, and rich, powerful men can usually do that.</p>
<p>Marian, thank you for your comments. It was this question that prompted me to start this thread- is there something intrinsically different between women who seek power and men who seek power? Or is it that we just haven’t had enough women in power?</p>
<p>Isn’t it telling that the examples people have brought up so far are:</p>
<p>1) Historical figures like Catharine the great or Elizabeth I.</p>
<p>2) Female teachers who have affairs with minor male students, which is not exactly the same as a politician in power.</p>
<p>That could have something to do with the fact that women aren’t as highly represented in politics.</p>
<p>The old “rules” about which professions were appropriate for which genders only started to break down a few decades ago. Among younger people, some of the formerly male-dominated professions now include roughly equal numbers of people of both sexes or are even becoming female-dominated (veterinary medicine is perhaps the best example of the latter – the vast majority of current veterinary students are female). But the senior levels of these professions are still dominated by men because when these individuals were at the age of entering the profession, few women did so.</p>
<p>On the other hand, some “male” professions, such as engineering, seem to be staying predominantly male.</p>
<p>It will take a few decades before we know whether the upper levels of politics are more like veterinary medicine or more like engineering.</p>