The First Female President in Tanzania: Analyzing Samia Suluhu Hassan's Electoral Success

Abstract

The inauguration of Samia Suluhu Hassan as Tanzania's first female president in March 2021 caught the world's attention. Since the highest political positions are typically dominated by men, the career life of a new female president could be instructional for achieving gender parity in political participation. Previous Academic literature has studied women in power from different perspectives, including the upbring environment, personal characteristics, and special social context. In this article, I examine Samia's electoral success in the 2010 election, which was a major milestone on her path to becoming president, as it brought her to key positions in the Tanzanian government and the ruling party. I argue that Samia Suluhu's electoral success is largely due to her personal charisma and attributes, the encouraging international and domestic social context for women, as well as local politics and civil unrest in Zanzibar, which instigated a social consensus for the need for a new leadership style that Samia offered.