WUNRN
WILL HELEN CLARK BE THE FIRST WOMAN
SECRETARY-GENERAL OF THE UN?
As
prime minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark brushed off criticism of her sex. Could
she become the first woman to run the United Nations?
'You've just got to keep standing' … Helen Clark. Photograph: Sarah Lee for
the Guardian
Jane
Martinson- 27 January 2014
In the course of a political career that has lasted over 30 years, Helen Clark only thought of quitting once.
With a personal poll rating of just 2%
soon after becoming party leader in 1993, she asked a few close friends whether
there was any point continuing. "They said, 'You've just got to keep
standing there', which was the best advice. If you keep standing, actually very
few will come after you."
Clark went on to become New
Zealand's first elected female prime minister in 1999 – leading
for three consecutive terms – and is now the most powerful woman at the United
Nations, working her second term as head of the
UN Development Programme (UNDP). She could well become the
first woman to lead the organisation once the incumbent Ban Ki-Moon stands down
in a few years.
En route to Davos, the alpine schmoozefest for
powerbrokers, Clark was in
On the advice from close friends to keep on as party leader, she persisted.
"They said: 'Don't give in.' It's not in my nature to give in
anyway." She lambasts organisers at Davos
for failing to increase the number of women and, on panels, happily discusses
female representation in the same breath as her views on
By the end of her nine years as
prime minister in 2008,
Now 63, there can be few women better qualified to talk about the treatment
of women in power.
"But, you know, if you found
all that hurtful then you're probably not going to be able to survive these
jobs. You have to be able to dismiss it, and I seem to have developed
a style, where [journalists] always knew that I'd get to a point and say 'move
on', you know, 'get over it'."
But was she really not that
bothered by patronising remarks? "Earlier on, it annoyed me, but then I
got to the point in my career where I said: 'Look, who cares, it's irrelevant
and if I comment on it, it's an issue, so let's move on.' I've got bigger
things to do."
Given this attitude, her view of Julia Gillard, the former prime minister of
"I had no personal
experience of it," Clark says of sexual harassment, "but, if there is
one silver lining from all this, we need all these people coming forward ...
Women are not prepared to suffer in silence. The lid is off and that has to be
healthy."
She is also well aware of the
double standards that mark a woman in power, pointing out the fact that
"strength" in men is described as "toughness" in women and
judged accordingly. But pondering why men are more likely to push themselves
forward, she suggests that more women than men "want to balance a range of
factors" when getting to the top. One of the biggest factors
is childbirth.
Elected to parliament at 31, she
has remained childless by choice. "It just would have been totally
impractical without a spouse who was prepared to completely give up a
career," she says. Her husband, sociologist Peter Davis, was on a
fast-track university career, so she felt that wasn't an option. Asked if she
ever regretted the decision, she says: "No, definitely not … It was
absolutely right for me."
But women who want to combine
motherhood with powerful positions should be able to, she says. "It really
points to the need for a lot more discussion of families and of the role of
boys and girls, women and men, so that the boys grow up with an expectation to
be an equal in the household."
Clark was brought up on a farm in
rural
She first became interested in
politics because of international affairs – the death of JFK when she was a
teenager, the war in
The election of a UN
secretary-general is a process so complicated it takes years to go through, all
of it behind closed doors. Clark has many points in her favour, not least her
current job and the fact that
Asked if she wants the job, she
refects on how being a woman would play out in that role. "There will be
interest in whether the UN will have a first woman because they're looking like
the last bastions, as it were." But it could also be a massive
"turn-off" to others, she admits. She loves her job, she says, and
laughs when I point out she hasn't answered my question.
"If there's enough support for the style of leadership that I
have, it will be interesting."
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