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She's got the power
Happy women’s history month! This week, we look at female representation in the US Congress and Canadian Parliament.
In Canada, Agnes Campbell Macphail became the first woman elected to the House of Commons and the first female parliamentarian in 1921. Jeannette Rankin from Montana broke the glass ceiling in the US by being the first woman elected to Congress in 1916. A year later, she earned a second distinction by joining 49 of her House colleagues in voting against US entry into World War I – a vote that destroyed her prospects for reelection in 1918.
Today, women are making gains but remain underrepresented in the House of Commons and Congress. The 44th federal general election in 2021 saw women win 103 of the 338 seats in the House of Commons, marking the first time women's representation in the House surpassed 30%. In the US Congress, there are 126 women in the 435-seat-strong House of Representatives and 25 women serving in the Senate.
The Graphic Truth: Women in power
Liz Truss is the shortest-serving PM in British history, but women heads of state and government across the world seem to be doing just fine. Some have yet to prove themselves — like Giorgia Meloni, who was sworn in Saturday as prime minister after riding a far-right election victory in Italy. Others have been at it for years, such as Sheikh Hasina, who’s provided stability that has given once-poor Bangladesh the highest GDP per capita ratio in South Asia. We list the world’s 18 female incumbents with executive authority and popular mandates to serve.
Women in politics whose names you should know in 2022
Was it the year of the woman? Angela Merkel left the political stage. New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern and Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen were given gold stars for their respective responses to the pandemic. And Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya emerged as Belarus’ democracy warrior.
As COVID lingers – and thrives – it’s clear that 2022 will be packed with immensely complicated political problems for all countries. Many female leaders will be at the forefront of efforts to meet complex domestic and international challenges over the next 12 months. Here are four of them.
Britain’s Liz Truss
Liz Truss has many jobs. She is Minister for Women and Equalities, and after a cabinet reshuffle in the fall she was also tapped as Foreign Secretary. This week, she added to her portfolio the unenviable role of chief negotiator with the EU on all things Brexit. One of her priorities will be to chart a path forward on the future of the Northern Irish border, which has put London on a path toward trade war with Brussels and trouble with Washington. Truss, who has now held cabinet positions in three Tory governments, is also trying to mold Britain's post-Brexit foreign policy.
Timing is everything in politics, and Truss takes on this monster portfolio just as her boss, Boris Johnson, finds himself in the dog house after a series of bungled policies and communication strategies – as well as a string of tasteless scandals of the Marie Antoniette variety. Truss has already been floated as a potential successor to Johnson, who analysts say may now be on borrowed time. But her chance to become prime minister could depend on how painstaking talks with Brussels progress in the near term. Can she triumph where others have so far failed?
France’s Valerie Pécresse
Since entering the French presidential fray just a few weeks ago, Valerie Pécresse, who now heads the center-right Les Républicains party, has shaken up a race that has been incumbent Emmanuel Macron’s to lose. Pécress has been in politics for a long time, having advised former President Jacques Chirac in the late 1990s, and is now head of Paris’ sprawling regional government.
In winning her party’s presidential nomination, Pécresse became the first woman to head the party of Charles de Gaulle, a big feat in a country where women remain underrepresented in politics.
Pécresse’s near-term challenge will be twofold: First, she must convince an embittered French electorate that she has a plan to improve average people’s lives after two years of pandemic hell. So far, her tough-on-immigration and security message seems to be resonating with moderate voters across the political spectrum.
But Pécresse’s second trial will be one that her male counterparts don’t have to contend with: convincing voters with long-held views about gender and leadership that a woman can – and should – head the next government.
Israel’s Merav Michaeli
Eight ragtag parties joined forces this past summer to unseat Israel’s longtime premier Benjamin Netanyahu. Only one of them is led by a woman. Merav Michaeli, a 54-year old former journalist, heads the once-dominant Labor party, which has seen its political fortunes wither in recent years along with the rest of the Israeli left.
For the past six months, Michaeli – and the entire ideologically-diverse coalition – has been focused on survival, by keeping the governing bloc from collapsing. They’ve done that, having passed the first national budget in three years.
But there’s a lot riding on Michaeli’s leadership, and many are counting on her to rebuild the liberal party of Golda Meir and Yizhak Rabin that’s been in shambles: “I am here because this is my project — to turn it back into a ruling party,” she told the New York Times earlier this year.
It’s true that Michaeli has brought Labor back from the brink (the group had been in the opposition from 2009 to 2020). But it’s one thing to bring a party back from oblivion as part of a sweeping change movement. It’s another to return it to its peak as Israel’s “peace camp” when neither the Israelis nor the Palestinian Authority now seem particularly keen on upending the status quo. So then what does the revived Labor party stand for in post-Oslo 2022? Now that the onboarding period is over, it’ll be Michaeli’s job to let Israelis know.
Hungary’s Katalin Novak
When discussing the illiberal shift in Eastern European politics in recent years, the media conjures images of leaders who look like barely reformed apparatchiks with stubby fingers. Then there’s Hungary’s Katalin Novak, vice president of the ruling Fidesz party, touting the group’s right-wing populist message.
This week, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán tapped Novak to be Hungary’s first female president should he prevail in elections next spring. Novak, who is 44, is widely considered both attractive and articulate. Indeed, undecided voters might find Fidesz’s hard line on LGBTQ rights and so-called traditional family values more palatable when Novak, Hungary’s Minister of Family and Youth Affairs and recipient of France’s highest state honor in 2019, is delivering the message.
As president, Novak’s job would be mostly ceremonial, though she could delay the enactment of some laws and appoint judges and a national prosecutor, which might come in handy for Orbán. But will Novak’s sugar-and-spice image help pull Orban across the finish line as he faces a united opposition and the toughest political fight of his life?Women in power — the World Trade Organization's Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Starting a new job is always daunting. For Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who just weeks ago started a new stint as director general at the World Trade Organization, the timing could not be more trying: she is taking over the world's largest global trade body amid once-in-a-generation public health and economic crises that have emboldened protectionist inclinations around the world.
Who is Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and how has her worldview shaped her politics and policymaking?
Nigerian trailblazer. "Investing in women is smart economics, and investing in girls, catching them upstream, is even smarter economics."
As Nigeria's first female finance minister (2003-2006 and 2011-2015) under presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan, Okonjo-Iweala oversaw sweeping financial reforms that helped stabilize the country's volatile economy. Indeed, her leadership was crucial in ensuring $18 billion in debt forgiveness, helping Nigeria secure its first-ever sovereign debt rating. She also pioneered a program that culled "ghost workers" from the civil service's payroll, saving around 163 billion naira ($398 million) over two years.
Okonjo-Iweala also started the privatization of state sectors like power, though that process has since proven to exacerbate problems, resulting in spotty power supply and price increases for the country of 200 million people. Additionally, though Okonjo-Iweala tackled corruption by making states report their accounts, failed attempts to diversify the country's economy, a stated aim of Okonjo-Iweala and the Jonathan government, has left Nigeria, Africa's largest oil producer, vulnerable to the shocks of global oil markets.
Central to her economic outlook is the belief that the political and economic fruition of Nigeria — and that of other African countries — is contingent on better integration of women into all areas of political and economic life. Though many Nigerian women have become influential entrepreneurs, she notes, lack of education opportunities for women and girls in the country's north have impeded development and growth (a crisis exacerbated by the deteriorating security situation in northern Nigeria over the past decade.)
It's worth noting that Okonjo-Iweala paid a personal price for her reforms and crackdown on corruption in the oil industry: In 2012, her 82-year old mother was kidnapped by bandits demanding the finance minister's resignation — and cash. Okonjo-Iweala refused to resign and her mother was eventually released safely (though details remain unclear).
African representation. "The low-income countries in Africa and elsewhere are some of the most rapidly growing economies in the world. These countries ought to be given more of a voice."
In Nigerian politics, as well as during her 25 years at the World Bank (she rose to managing director), and now at the WTO, Okonjo-Iweala has always emphasized that African nations, as well as other emerging markets, are some of the fastest-growing economies in the world. (Before oil prices fell sharply in 2016, Nigeria's economy was growing steadily at 6.3 percent.) Pointing to the fact that many frontier economies in Africa and Asia were the engines of the world's economic revival in the aftermath of the global financial crisis in 2009, Okonjo-Iweala says that African nations should be given more voice in global forums where important international decisions are made.
It's precisely this outlook that Okonjo-Iweala — who until recently was also chair of the GAVI board which aims to boost vaccine access in the developing world — plans to bring to her tenure at the WTO. In recent months, Okonjo-Iweala has lobbied against "vaccine nationalism," and she's advocated for using WTO intellectual property rules to expand vaccine development and manufacturing in developing countries. She has pointed to licensing deals like the one struck with India's Serum Institute that allows it to produce AstraZeneca's vaccine as a model — a view shared by many leaders, including South Africa's President Cyril Ramphosa who recently said that rich countries were practicing "vaccine apartheid" by blocking emerging markets from manufacturing vaccines on their home turf.
The importance of symbolism. Many media reports have focused on Okonjo-Iweala's bonafides as the first African and first woman to head the WTO after almost seven decades (the WTO emerged from the former General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). That's a reductive way of looking at Okonjo-Iweala's accomplishments, but her appointment as WTO chief at this tumultuous moment in its history is indeed an historic breakthrough for African women, who see their own social and professional prospects boosted by her accomplishments. As one Nigerian academic recently said, "[Her] achievement is not just a day's work. It's a kind of investment that she has nurtured for a long time."
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