Power is shifting to women and the Old Guys of the GOP are losing REUTERS/Jim YoungRepublican U.S. presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio speaks as he debates businessman Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson at the debate Tuesday.Old Guys Rule? No more. Yes, they hate it. Not because the next president may be a Democrat. She’s a woman! That’s a mortal blow to the GOP’s macho-male ego. A woman president signals a historic shift to female domination of males, a huge pathological blow, the coup de grace in another humiliating political defeat. But look closer, the trend’s already in progress, fast. Old guys, old thinking, old ideologies are fading in power, even damaging the economy, our superpower status, even while fighting desperately to drag America back into an outdated 19th century macho-patriarchy mind-set. In fact, recent political debates sound like the braggadocio of teenage boys. No, the era of Old Guys Rule really is over, they just refuse to accept it. America needs new blood, new thinking, more powerful women. Why? Gender research in behavioral economics, neuroscience and brain psychology confirm that women do think, feel, see differently, they value the economy and the world differently, it’s a huge difference. Psychologically, women naturally think long term, see into the future. The male brain is programmed to think short-term, myopic, aggressively maximizing year-end profits, quarterly earnings, today’s closing prices. The male brain is wired for short-term action. My wife’s a family therapist, sees the difference. Three decades of working with males has given her a keen sense of how the male brain works. Professional colleagues agree, gender differences are summarized in many books, like “Men Are From Mars, Women From Venus.” And yet, these differences still baffle so many men in today’s world, especially male politicians who react defensively to protect their historic turf. They just don’t get it. Deep down they feel threatened, feel their power slipping away. So they fight back, not fully understanding why, just holding onto the past, because their brains tell them Old Guys Should Rule. Men should rule. It’s a guy thing. Pride. Patriarchy. Paternalism. God’s plan. Divine right. Guys feel so threatened that if they don’t get a guy in the White House, whether Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul or Donald Trump — anyone but a woman — then that will not only be a death blow to the fragile male ego, it will kill capitalism, GOP conservatism, even destroy civilization on our planet. America needs a quantum leap to new thinkers, new women leaders If women’s and men’s brains really are so very different ... if women really do see something that men are missing ... if America’s male-dominated patriarchy can’t grasp the wave of changes coming in our culture and demographics ... then given the mess our economy is in today, America really could use a lot more female energy, women strategists running government. New leaders, a woman in the White House, more power players like Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Claire McCaskill and all the other elected women confronting the crusty Old Guys running congress like a private men’s club. Fortunately America is changing fast: There were only four women in my University of Virginia Law School graduating class. Now half. Listen to how this single biggest trend is redefining the 21st century, how women are already moving into leadership roles in America and the world, seven key trends in this rapidly emerging new world culture:1. Many New Economy job skills are gender-neutral, favoring women Men raised in macho cultures with traditional values feel even more threatened as women gain equality and power. New York Times reviewer Jennifer Homans writes of Hanna Rosin’s bestseller, “The End of Men, and Rise of Women”: “The end of men is really the end of a manufacturing-based economy.” Over six million lost jobs since 2000, mostly men, “a new matriarchy is emerging: For the first time in history, the global economy is becoming a place where women are finding more success than men ... run by young, ambitious, capable women ... taking matters into their own hands.” Forget politics, this is the “new service economy, which doesn’t care about physical strength,” demanding skills that “come easily to women.” Our educational system is preparing a new generation of women leaders: “Today 50% more women get college degrees, so even if fewer women are at the top, they are beginning to dominate professions like accounting, financial management, optometry, dermatology, forensic pathology and veterinary practices.”2. More women now in major power positions in Corporate America When Fortune magazine’s annual list of “The 50 Most Powerful Women” was launched in 1998 there were only two women CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Three years ago 19 women CEOs, at giants like IBM, Pepsico, Xerox, Kraft and DuPont. Today 27 women CEO’s head companies with over $1 trillion in market value. “More women wield more power than at any point in history,” including many “guiding the future of the global economy” like the International Monetary Fund’s Managing Director Christine Lagarde, Germany’s powerhouse Chancellor Angela Merkel and Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff.3. More women now elected to legislatures all across America Males believe they still have power in running government. That illusion is weakening, threatening male politicians as well as male carpenters. Not long ago the National Foundation for Women Legislators said: “The greatest rising force in American politics today is not a political party, nor is it the lobbying community, it is women.” In the early 1980s “women held a mere 10% of all state legislative seats in the country, recently they held over 25% of more than 7,000 seats nationwide. Today 20 women serve in the U.S. Senate and 104 serve in the U.S. House of Representatives,” plus five women are state governors. At this rate, by 2050, women will be in a leadership majority. No wonder the male ego is in a dark psychological panic mode.4. Women legislators increasing across the world, make better rulers The trend is sweeping the world. In “The Case for Optimism,” Bill Clinton’s Time feature a few years ago, he said the “world is getting better all the time” in five ways, including technology, health care, green energy. His fourth key: “Women Rule.” Worldwide, women now make up 20% of elected legislators, almost double 15 years ago: “This is good news, not only for the individuals themselves but also for entire societies.” Why? “It’s been proven that women tend to reinvest economic gains back into their families and communities more than men do.” Get it? Women not only think different from men ... they think better.5. Women are also better leaders in America’s ‘Fight for the Future’ While too many men still resist, others are teaming up with women, as equals working together. Here’s Clinton’s fifth reason for the case for optimism: “Justice, The Fight for the Future.” The future “has never had a big enough constituency.” But things are changing, fast, because now the survival of the planet demands new thinking, new strategies. Women get it, are taking the lead. Clinton says we must “create a whole different mind-set. We are in a pitched battle between the present array of resources and attitudes and the future struggling to be born.”6. Women’s brains are wired with a long-term strategic vision Money manager Jeremy Grantham says our male-dominated patriarchal culture has created “an army of left-brained immediate doers.” Both Wall Street and Corporate America guys think short-term, discounting to zero longer-term social costs, like resource depletion and climate change. Grantham predicted the global crash two years before 2008. Few listened. Now he warns the planet can’t feed the 10 billion population predicted for 2050. Few listen. On a psychological level, Grantham also warns that our male-dominated capitalism has an “absolute inability to process the finiteness of resources and the mathematical impossibility of maintaining rapid growth in physical output.” Translation: The short-term thinking male brain is not wired to solve the world’s biggest problems. Women’s brains are. The male brain is myopic, not wired to see into the future.7. Men sabotage their own future hanging onto Old Guy patriarchy Bottom line, this gender war exposes how men are also their own worst enemy, sabotaging their own future. Look beyond the so-called “war on women” rhetoric in the political arena where men keep fighting to control women’s issues, out of touch with most Americans. No wonder, when we read The Donald’s tweets and snarky digs at his fellow GOP debaters, and their counterattacks, they sound ore like teenagers bickering during recess, not even like angry Old Guys any more. Look deep into the psyche of today’s male politicians: They’re really just frightened little boys who feel threatened at a deep subconscious gut level. So they react, they double down, they fight harder to restore a familiar but outdated power structure where Old Guys Rule. Unfortunately, today’s America cannot afford to go back there and survive. Why? Because a massive cultural tidal wave is sweeping both men and women in its path. America’s in trouble. “Men are losing their grip,” writes Homans. “Patriarchy is crumbling and we are reaching ‘the end of 200,000 years of human history and the beginning of a new era’ in which women, and womanly skills and traits, are on the rise.” Yes, we are witnessing the last gasp of an ancient male-dominated patriarchy. But resistance is futile. No one can stop this historic shift, as the New Economy just keeps empowering more women, preparing them for the future ... while sadly, the male ego keeps them trapped in the dying past, whining about why Old Guys Can’t Rule No More. Why Women Will Rule the Future. More from MarketWatch