WUNRN
POLITICS: For
Women, Leaning Doesn't Make For Leading
By Miren Gutierrez**
ROME, Jan 9 (IPS) - "A woman who enters politics
changes; a thousand women who enter politics change politics," Chilean
President Michelle Bachelet told the Spanish television channel TVE in a recent
interview.
It is the former that seems to ring more true. Most powerful
women, particularly though not only in developing countries, are or have been
members of elite families: widows, daughters, wives of powerful men, in
societies where women do not have equal access to most things.
The list of female rulers who have derived their leadership
from men is a long and telling one.
Mireya Moscoso (president of Panama from 1999-2004) was
widow of three times former president Arnulfo Arias (who was deposed each time
by the military). Before her, Isabel Martínez de Perón was president of
Argentina from 1974-1976, following the death of her husband, President Juan
Domingo Perón. Argentina has just elected its second woman president: Cristina
Fernández de Kirchner, who succeeded her husband Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) in
December.
The success -- or succession -- of women began in Asia in
recent times with Sühbaataryn Yanjmaa, widow of Mongolian hero Sühbaatar. She
was the equivalent of head of state from Sept. 23, 1953 to Jul. 7, 1954.
"If we consider such a post as having a real ruling status, she would have
been (excepting queens) the absolute first woman political ruler in contemporary
history," says Zárate's Political Collections (ZPC), a record of worldwide
leadership.
Corazon Aquino was president of the Philippines from 1986 to
1992, after her husband Benigno Aquino -- the leader of the opposition against
dictator Ferdinand Marcos -- was assassinated. Chandrika Kumaratunga, Sri
Lankan president from 1994-2005, followed in the footsteps of her mother
Sirimavo Bandaranaike, three times prime minister, a rare instance of a woman
taking leadership after another female family member.
Benazir Bhutto, assassinated Dec. 27, was Pakistani prime
minister from 1988-1990 and again from 1993-1996. She was the daughter of
former premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of Sukarno (Indonesia's
first post-colonial president 1945-1967), led the world's largest Muslim
country from 2001-2004, and is expected to seek the post again in 2009. In
Bangladesh, arch-enemies Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia have both served as
prime ministers and as heads of the two largest political parties. Hasina's
late father and Zia's late husband ran the country at different times.
"These women share dynastic origins and 'inherited'
political leadership," says the German government-funded research report
‘Dynasties and Female Leadership in Asia’.
Women leaders all, but not all leaders as women in their own
right. "Someone who belongs to the elite has family connections, has also
access to attention and power, and sex becomes less important," Charlotte
Bunch, executive director of the Centre for Women's Global Leadership at
Rutgers University in the United States, told IPS. "Hillary Clinton (wife
of former U.S. president Bill Clinton), the women leaders in South Asia,
wouldn't be where they are without their access to family connections."
Hillary Clinton's "gender card" and family
connections are now hotly debated in the U.S. presidential race. It is a
reminder also that political success can be just as hard for ordinary women in
the United States as in the developing world.
"This question has made me think of New Jersey, where
our office is based," says Bunch. "Until this last election at a
state level, for many years, it was hard for women to get into politics here.
It was a corrupt all-male system. Women would come into politics from civil
society, with some idealistic notions, and couldn't get to the top."
"One reason why widows may sometimes have the chance to
enter politics easier is that, with the death of their husbands, they don't
have to go up through this male system from the bottom. They immediately have
access to the top," she adds.
But that is not the way for the "one thousand
women" Bachelet speaks of. "That notion," says Bunch,
"indicates that most women at the top, without a larger political base of
support, cannot make that much change in politics."
The question for women leaders becomes particularly potent
in Islamic states. Claudia Derichs and Mark Thompson, authors of 'Dynasties and
Female Leadership in Asia', write that "most surprising, given widespread
stereotypes about Islam, is female leadership in the heavily Muslim states in
Southeast and South Asia. Except for Afghanistan and Brunei, women lead, or
have led, governments or opposition groups in all predominantly Islamic
countries in this region (Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Pakistan). Women
have both led struggles against dictatorships and participated in competitive,
democratic elections."
Bunch says that "if you look at the countries where
there are women heads of state, religion is strong, but they are not declared
Islamic states." In Pakistan, she says, "with her (Benazir Bhutto's)
family connections and party position, people overlooked her sex, there was a
willingness to overlook that factor…A woman becomes a man, she is allowed to be
the exception and cross over. The first Queen Elizabeth was allowed to do that
too, she was viewed essentially as a man. That doesn't change the status
quo."
That change could be a better bet through women who take
leadership on their own, not under the shadow of displaced male relatives.
* Corrects portions of paragraphs 4,5 and 6. ** The first of
a three-part report on women in leadership by IPS Editor-in-Chief Miren
Gutierrez. ***Thanks to Caroline Keller in Rome for the charts.
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