Women
in charge: a new record?
Merkel,
May, Clinton: A Hillary presidency would add to a worldwide shift in
what power looks like.
By
ANNABELLE TIMSIT
7/30/16, 6:29 PM CET
When British Prime
Minister Theresa May and German Chancellor Angela Merkel met recently
in Berlin for the first time since May had taken her new post, it
wasn’t just a dramatic moment in itself — two female leaders of
two of the world’s most powerful countries standing side by side in
the German capital. It was also, perhaps, a hint of more to come.
Picture the major
global actors of 2017. Among the leading candidates to be United
Nations secretary general next year are several women, and if one of
them is chosen, she will join a female managing director of the
International Monetary Fund and a female director general of the
World Health Organization. May and Merkel will find themselves on the
world stage with the female presidents and prime ministers of Chile,
Norway and South Korea, among other countries, and — if Hillary
Clinton can pull out a win this fall — the United States.
In fact, by January
2017, as many as 21 countries could be led by a woman as president,
prime minster or an equivalent high political office. That number
might not seem all that big at first glance. But according to
Politico Magazine’s calculations, it would be a record, topping the
19 female heads of state currently in power. In the United States,
1992 was dubbed the “year of the woman” when a record number of
women were newly elected to the House and Senate. Now, 2017 could be
the “year of the woman” around the world.
Which raises the
question: If, as the old saw goes, women actually ruled the world,
would it matter? Beyond cheery visions of Clinton-May-Merkel in
locked arms, would a record number of female leaders really have an
impact for women around the world? Would it change the course of
global events, from the negotiation of the British exit from the
European Union, to the future of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, to
the global response to the Islamic State?
Women are more
likely to be elected head of state by popular vote only if they have
familial ties to a dominant male politician.
Of course, every
woman head of state is different from the next, and often woman
leaders expressly work to undermine stereotypes of being
“compassionate” or “soft.” A quick Google search of the 19
current female heads of state reveals that at least eight of them are
nicknamed the “Iron Lady” in their respective countries,
presumably for their reputations as being tough or hawkish. In one of
her first appearances in parliament as prime minister — as the
first woman to hold the post since the original Iron Lady, Margaret
Thatcher — Theresa May was asked by a Scottish member of parliament
whether she was “prepared to authorize a nuclear strike that could
kill 100,000 innocent men, women and children.” She did not miss a
beat, answering: “Yes.”
But there is a
growing body of evidence showing that women, in certain ways, are
more effective leaders than men. For instance, research has shown
that women are more inclined toward “collaboration across
ideological lines and social sectors,” as a report by the Institute
for Inclusive Security, a think tank focused on women’s
contributions to peacebuilding, put it. In the United States, on
average, congresswomen co-sponsor more bills than men and can recruit
more co-sponsors than men, according to data gathered by Political
Parity, a nonpartisan group dedicated to increasing women’s
participation in politics. The bills these women pass are also more
successful, according to the same data: On average, women are 31
percent better at advancing bills farther in the legislative process
than men are.
Female political
leadership also has measurable effects on violence and peacebuilding.
“Women come across
that divide and say, ‘Enough already,” says Melanne Verveer, who
was U.S. ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues under
Hillary Clinton at the State Department and now leads the Georgetown
Institute for Women, Peace and Security.
That inclination
toward compromise is especially useful in highly fractured countries,
where female leaders are associated with higher rates of political
and economic success. A 2013 Journal of International Affairs study
showed that having a female leader in “highly diverse countries”
correlated with a 6.6 percent higher GDP growth rate compared with
having a male leader, because of female leaders’ ability to
navigate divided societies and ethnic fractionalization.
Female political
leadership also has measurable effects on violence and peacebuilding.
According to the Institute for Inclusive Security, the higher the
percentage of women involved in a country’s post-conflict
negotiations, the less likely it is that the country will relapse
into conflict — because, the institute’s research concludes,
women are adept at building coalitions to push for peace, are often
perceived as more honest brokers than men and are good at broadening
societal participation. In fact, when women are involved in
negotiating peace deals, those deals are 35 percent more likely to
remain in effect for at least 15 years.
Female politicians
are also known to bring more diverse policy issues to the table —
particularly those concerning women, children and disadvantaged
groups, according to the National Democratic Institute. The election
of Hillary Clinton in the United States, for instance, could mean
that issues like childcare, equal pay and parental leave — all
issues Clinton has discussed on the campaign trail — will get more
attention, says Verveer, who served as Clinton’s chief of staff
when she was first lady. “Because it’s part of her experience and
her perspective, she will move these issues from the margin to a much
more prominent place in her administration.”
Two former female
heads of state I interviewed — Laura Chinchilla of Costa Rica and
Tarja Halonen of Finland — said the same holds true when it comes
to international issues. During her 12 years in office, Halonen, who
served as president of Finland from 2000 to 2012, watched the U.N.
struggle to pass resolutions concerning sexual and reproductive
rights in part, she says, due to a lack of fellow women leaders to
help her efforts. “I believe that with more women leaders, we could
get the reforms that we need faster and better,” she told me. With
a female U.N. secretary-general and as many as three P5+1 women
leaders, it’s much easier to imagine such resolutions passing.
All this being said,
there’s good reason to be only cautiously optimistic about the
record number of woman leaders likely to ascend to power next year.
When it comes to both heads of state and national parliaments, we’re
still a long way from the 20 to 30 percent “critical mass” at
which, experts say, women’s “influence grows perceptibly” in a
group because “they can form coalitions, provide mutual support,
and reshape the group’s overall culture,” as Suzanne Nossel wrote
in a recent Foreign Policy article.
In a 2015 report by
U.N. Women, the United Nations entity focused on gender equality and
women’s empowerment, only 30 countries had parliaments with at
least 30 percent female ministers, and eight countries still had
absolutely no women in their entire governments. Even if there are a
record number of female heads of state by next year, they’ll still
only represent about 10 percent of the world total. Chinchilla, for
one, who served as president of Costa Rica from 2010 to 2014, argues
that these numbers still aren’t yet high enough to change political
institutions radically.
While many observers
say the next U.N. secretary-general is likely to be one of six female
candidates (including one from Costa Rica), Chinchilla has her
doubts: Given that the General Assembly is still overwhelmingly male,
she says she isn’t betting it will be “sensitive enough to the
need to elect more women for this position.”
What’s worrisome
is that trend line for women’s representation in international
politics is not all that promising. In fact, the rate of increase in
the number of female heads of state ascending around the world has
plateaued in recent years, according to Julie Ballington, policy
adviser at U.N. Women. At the ministerial level, progress has also
been slow: In its report (which came with a press release titled,
tellingly, “Sluggish progress on women in politics will hamper
development”), U.N. Women found that, since 2005, the percentage of
women ministers in the world had increased by just 3.5 percentage
points.
U.S. Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton (right) meets with then-British Home Secretary
Theresa May at the London Conference on Somalia, in central London,
on February 23, 2012.
U.S. Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton (right) meets with then-British Home Secretary
Theresa May at the London Conference on Somalia, in central London,
on February 23, 2012 | Jason Reed / AFP via Getty Images
Without structural
changes to the ways in which women are recruited into politics —
whether parliamentary quotas or more equitable funding regulations —
women are likely to continue to lag behind men when it comes to
running for office. A 2013 American University study, for instance,
found that 63 percent of college women asked about potentially
running for office one day said they had “never thought about it,”
compared to 43 percent of college men polled.
And according to
research by Farida Jalalzai, a political scientist at Oklahoma State
University, that’s not the only problem. Women are also more likely
to be elected head of state by popular vote only if they have
familial ties to a dominant male politician. In her review of all
female presidents from 1960 to 2008, Jalalzai found that, out of
seven dominant female presidents elected by popular vote, only one
lacked connections to a political family: Liberia’s Ellen
Johnson-Sirleaf, who is still in power today. Hillary Clinton, of
course, fits right into this pattern, as the wife of a former
president.
“If a woman is
ultimately successful in advancing to the Oval Office, what
implications would this victory have for the gendered nature of the
presidency worldwide?” Jalalzai asks. “It depends very much on
the particular woman. If, like Clinton, she has familial ties to
power, her election would represent more of the same.”
Women and women’s
rights advocates around the world might rightfully be able to
celebrate next year as a milestone. But it will also be a reminder of
the long way we still have to go.
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