What if women ran the world?

It is getting harder to escape the sense that most of the trouble in the world – whether it's coming out of the Senate, a mortgage lender, or a tank turret – can be traced to one overriding problem: too many men steering. Had our economic, domestic, and foreign policy been more informed by women, we might be enjoying a safer ride. Doubt it? Here's a test. Would any of the women you admire have set up a healthcare system as byzantine, costly, and underperforming as America's? Or a financial system where mortgage lenders don't have to care about being paid back? Or a bailout that spends $1 trillion in public money to subsidize the purchase of junk debt from the same geniuses that generated it?

Women's effectiveness as decisionmakers is well documented, even if it isn't entirely accepted by either gender. An MIT study of female leaders running village councils in India found that by objective measures (building better wells, taking fewer bribes) women ran their villages better. American women are about to eclipse men in sheer payroll numbers – and they're now majority owners of nearly half of the private companies in the country. Yet somehow the average working woman still devotes much more time to child care and housework.What's clear is that, on average, men overestimate their IQ while women underestimate theirs. And that may be a clue, in terms of effectiveness: While decisiveness and risk-taking matter, hubris (too often male) creates problems. Humility and collaboration (more often female) solve them. What explains the difference?