Female Prime Minister Research Articles

Tomorrow’s Woman?

ABSTRACT The election of Fiamē Naomi Mata‘afa as the first female prime minister of Sāmoa has been widely heralded as a critical juncture, especially for women, that will change the nature of Sāmoan politics. In this Comment piece we endorse the observation that Fiamē’s success is remarkable and her election as prime minister significant. But we also caution against the somewhat idealistic and naïve assumption that her prime ministership will be a radical break from the past. Fiamē is well suited to the role because she has three decades of experience as a member of the former governing party in which she rose to the rank of deputy prime minister. She only broke ranks in opposition to reforms that she felt were a significant threat to the rule of law and to fa'aSāmoa cultural beliefs and traditions. If she is a success as prime minister, it will be because her status, profile and highly tuned political instincts embody and balance both continuity and change.

THE PROBLEM OF REPRESENTATION OF TURKISH WOMEN IN POLITICS (1980S TO THE PRESENT)

In Turkish modernization, important steps were taken under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk so that women could reach the level of contemporary civilized peoples. For this purpose, women who have lagged behind the society in education, training and social life, especially gender equality, have been granted political rights before some European countries. Turkish women, who obtained the right to vote and be elected in 1934, were included in the political life, and they went to the polls for the first time in the elections held in 1935. For many years, the place of women in political life has decreased due to many reasons such as the fact that political parties do not allow quotas for female deputies, democracy cannot be fully ensured within political parties, sexism, politics are seen as men’s work, women’s education problem, while the women’s movements have increased in the period from the 1980s to the present. Its power has increased due to reasons such as quota implementation based on changes in electoral systems. Although the number of women in politics has not reached a sufficient level even today, as the sexist approach in society and the obstacles placed in front of women are overcome, the effectiveness and success of Turkish women in political life will increase. Although it is difficult for women to take part in the male-dominated structure in politics, it is seen that women are not willing enough and they struggle less. It is possible to say that women have made important strides in the political arena in the Turkish society led by a female prime minister, Professor Tansu Çiller.

Women’s movements under women presidents: bringing a gender perspective to the legal system

ABSTRACT Few women have risen to the ranks of heads of state or government worldwide. The low numbers of female presidents and prime ministers in world history have left many untested assumptions about the impact of female leadership on the lives of fellow women. This article builds upon two bodies of work – studies of female presidencies, on the one hand, and on women’s movement-building, particularly in South and South-East Asia, on the other – to focus on the relationship between women leaders and women’s movements. Utilising case studies of national law reform during the presidencies of Corazon Aquino (1986–1992) and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (2001–2010) in the Philippines and Megawati Sukarnoputri (2001–2004) in Indonesia, and drawing from key informant interviews in both countries, I argue that when women lead, women’s movements employ particular strategies to catalyse the passage of ‘women-friendly’ legislation. Examples of law reform illustrate the power of the female vote to sway presidential decision-making and the flow-on effect of a president who values the participation of fellow women in the government bureaucracy. Yet the relationship between female presidents and the success of movements is neither clear-cut nor linear. Women’s movements face opportunities and limitations under the leadership of women presidents, often having to compromise their agendas to achieve a united front.

Foreword

Foreword Mark Giordano (bio) We are in the midst of the first global pandemic to occur in a hyper-connected world. Individuals have been forced to change their daily routines through social distancing, wearing masks, and observing quarantine procedures. National governments are mobilizing resources within their borders to create and distribute vaccinations, confronting the economic impacts of shutdowns, and—we hope—addressing the uneven burdens of dislocation, disruption, and suffering. But as noted by Gro Harlem Brundtland, Norway’s first female Prime Minister, the virus cannot be successfully defeated without multilateral cooperation.1 We have international institutions to facilitate that cooperation, though their effectiveness has sometimes been undermined by national agendas unrelated to health. The clash between China and the United States over Taiwan’s status at the World Health Organization is a case in point. Vaccine development has also become a new form of national power projection, as exemplified in Russia’s reference to the Space Race in the naming of its Sputnik V vaccine.2 China’s delivery of pandemic supplies to African states is framed using phrases like the “health silk road” and with references to its Belt and Road strategy.3 Meanwhile, the United States and Europe are accused, with reason, of ignoring the shared nature of the problem through choosing to focus on their own short-term, domestic health interests. Thankfully, the cooperation news is not all negative. Scientists working on vaccines have established international linkages that The New York Times has called “a global collaboration unlike any in history.”4 After initial fears that pandemic related border closures and national restrictions on medical supply exports might mortally wound the European Union, a budget was passed that broke norms for cross-border transfers and laid the groundwork for stronger European cooperation beyond the pandemic. And when the severity of Iran’s COVID crisis became clear, the United Arab Emirates offered—and Iran accepted—medical aid.5 The extent to which state and non-state actors have worked together to defeat the pandemic and confront potential long-term consequences has prompted questions of collective responsibility. Who bears the onus for addressing problems that transcend concepts and constructs like state borders? In what ways do and should these responsibilities manifest? What lessons can we learn from the successes and failures witnessed in the age of COVID-19 that may be applied to future global problem sets? After all, COVID-19 is neither the first nor the last issue to pose such widespread challenges. The impacts of illicit trade, the spread of misinformation, the realities of climate change, and further issues will force various levels of actors to expend resources and to collaborate with one another to successfully confront these threats. The articles in this edition of the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs help us think through a range of issues related to multilateral collaboration and the pandemic, with a particular focus on topics that may be less commonly addressed in the news. These include the role of Latin America militaries in support of pandemic response efforts, the need to rethink frameworks for humanitarian governance, and the potential of technology-enabled contact tracing regimes to supplement global arms control. Through [End Page 3] engaging with these issues and innovative perspectives, the GJIA staff hopes to encourage its readers and the international affairs community to seek better solutions to global challenges and to further our collective understanding of what it means to serve our fellow citizens of the world in a time of uncertainty and change. Mark Giordano Mark Giordano is a professor of geography, the Cinco Hermanos Chair in Environment and International Affairs, Vice-Dean for Undergraduate Affairs in Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, and the faculty advisor for GJIA, a role he assumed in the fall of 2019. His research focuses primarily on the international political dimensions of water, agriculture, and the environment. He teaches classes on those and other topics, including the (in)famous Map of the Modern World. Notes 1. Gro Harlem Brundtland, “COVID-19’s threat to our global civilisation and the need for collective responsibility,” The Elders, April 11, 2020, https://theelders.org/news/covid-19s-threat-our-global...

Right-wing populism and feminist politics: The case of Law and Justice in Poland

This article disentangles the complexity of right-wing populism and feminist politics using an original framework based on inputs (representative claims) and outputs (policies) to examine a Polish case. In 2015, the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS) formed a single-party majority government led by a female prime minister after winning the elections. PiS is ideologically conservative, promotes traditional and national values and is supported by the Catholic Church. Additionally, it is hostile towards what it calls ‘gender-ideology’ and is reluctant to implement feminist policies. This article also reveals that PiS represents conservative women’s interests and advocates an aspect of conservative feminism, therefore possessing a duality in its claims and policies. Overall, this article draws inferences about the nexus between social conservatism, populism and feminism, and thus seeks to contribute to the scholarly literature by examining a timely issue against the backdrop of rising populism, illiberalism and anti-gender campaigns.

Re-inventing the martial ‘hero’ and the weak ‘beauty queen’ through the sporting identity: a tale of two competing gendered bodies, Muay Thai and the stability of the Thai nation-state

ABSTRACT This article examines the gendered bodies and practices of male and female leaders in politically unstable, conflict-ridden Thailand between 2006 and 2019. In a country where the number of military coups has surged to twenty-two attempts (whether successful or unsuccessful) since 1932, the latest military-led coup by Gen. Prayudth Chan-Osha presents another threat to the stability of the country’s democracy. In response to public unease, Gen. Prayudth Chan-Osha projects himself as a source of Thai national strength and stability; to promote an optimistic public outlook, the general puts his martial masculinity and his militaristic physicality on public display. Culturally informed concepts of ‘good/strong’ male corporeality and its ‘bad/weak’ female countertype enable General Prayudth to identify as a national saviour by assuming the mantle of the martial hero. By highlighting his regime’s masculine military strength, he asserts, by contrast, the softness, weakness, and corruptibility of his key political rival, Thailand’s first elected female prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra. His public performance of national leadership argues that these frailties render his opponent ‘unfit’ for national leadership.

Role of Benazir Bhutto in Restoration of Democracy in Pakistan (1977-1988

Benazir Bhutto has the distinction of being the first popularly elected female prime minister in any Muslim country in the world. But this distinction was preceded by her more than a decade long struggle against dictatorship of General Ziaul Haq. Aspiring to join diplomatic corps or media as a journalist, she entered in politics under the force of circumstances in 1977 after the government of her father, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was toppled in a coup. Gradually, she occupied the center stage in the politics of Pakistan through her sheer struggle against dictatorship and for restoration of democracy in the country. In the process, she was subjected to repeated detentions, intimidation, coercion as well as physical and mental hardships to abandon her struggle. However, she was able to sustain those hardships and finally paved the way towards restoration of democracy in Pakistan in 1988.

A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion by Tom Segev

Reviewed by: A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion by Tom Segev Christopher L. Schilling (bio) A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion By Tom Segev. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2019. 817 pp. Born in 1945, Tom Segev is an Israeli journalist and historian widely associated with Israel's so-called New Historians, a group that challenges many of the country's traditional narratives. In his previous book, 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East (Macmillan, 2007), Segev controversially denies any existential threat to Israel from a military point of view and believes that its Arab neighbours would not have attacked Israel in 1967. Segev argues that because major parts of the Israeli population feared Egypt and Syria, pressure increased and led the Israeli government to a preemptive attack. In his critique, Michael Oren subsequently disregarded Segev, despite his doctorate in history, as a journalist: "He's not really a trained historian."1 Oren asserts that Segev "contradict[ed] himself" and committed "glaring oversights."2 In the same vein, Benny Morris called Segev's analysis "essentially false," contributing to the "contemporary delegitimation of Israel" while pointing "readers and scholars in no worthwhile direction."3 Segev describes Ben-Gurion as a humorless, pork-eating, Shabbatworking atheist—a man who suffered from depression, spent weeks in bed, lied, forged academic documents to get into university in Istanbul, and ran away from his responsibilities. Segev faults Ben-Gurion for security failures, as well as for dismissing Holocaust survivors as disappointing "human capital" and Sephardi Jews as "primitive." He tells of a Ben-Gurion who excitedly waited to see Trotsky on the Red Square in Moscow and bought Mein Kampf at a train kiosk in Munich; of a man of moods and outbursts, one who was always between supreme happiness and suicidal depression; of a man who consulted a Romanian fortune teller, and once claimed to have seen a flying saucer. [End Page 307] The book focuses in great detail on the four women with whom Ben-Gurion allegedly had extramarital affairs. Segev defends his focus on these affairs arguing that they are of genuine historical value rather than mere gossip: "The first answer is the standard one—that if the leader isn't faithful to his wife, maybe he's not faithful to his voters, either. If he cheats on her, maybe he cheats on them, too […] I don't think it's unreasonable to know about his weaknesses and distress, and about the women whose company he enjoyed while making important decisions."4 Whether or not it is persuasive to deduce that an individual who cheats on his wife is more likely to lie to voters, or to assume a politician would necessarily be persuaded by women with whom he shares his bed, Oren's critique of journalism versus academic analysis comes to mind. Following such logic, one might be inclined to ask Segev whether a politician who is faithful to his wife is less likely to lie to his voters. Segev's book sees women simply as historical bystanders in the formation of the Jewish state. Unfortunately, women are described only in relation to their male counterparts: "His young wife took down the rifle and rushed after him [farmer Shimon Melamed] to give him the weapon. She went home to watch their child, and her husband went up to the farm" (94); "He [Ben-Gurion] handed over most of the money to a woman who was also a party member, in exchange for which she cooked his dinners" (102). Segev's book often seems to adhere to a tradition of narrating Israeli history in which women are depicted as artists, martyrs, or grieving mothers, with the exception of Israel's only female prime minister, Golda Meir. Too often, the contributions of women who participated in the development of the State of Israel and its institutions—the "state at any cost"—have been buried in archives or remain family stories. Only recently has this participation begun to slowly appear in the literature. And it is about time: the year A State at Any Cost was published in Israel marks...

Changing Media Ecologies in Thailand: Women's Online Participation in the 2013/2014 Bangkok Protests

Traditionally marginalized groups now have more access to new and unconventional means to participate in politics, transforming the media ecologies of existing political environments. Contemporary feminist scholarship has centered on how women use new media technologies to serve political agendas. However, this literature focuses predominately on women in the West, while women in developing countries, or Asia more generally, have been largely excluded from analysis. This article aims to fill in this gap by examining Thai women’s online activities during the 2013/2014 Bangkok political protests. Specifically, we ask how the rise of social and digital media has altered what it means to participate politically in the context of Thai women’s present-day political experience. To answer this question we looked at how women resorted to various digital and social media to discuss women’s rights and political issues, including Yingluck Shinawatra’s political leadership as Thailand’s first female prime minister (2011-2014). Moving beyond traditional notions of participation, we argue that there is a need to recognize the emerging dynamics of women’s online engagement in the political landscape of Thailand. In the context of a totalitarian state, speaking out against the ruling authority online embodies an additional layer of citizen resistance, a feature of digital life that is often taken for granted in Western democracies.

Negative Media Frames and Female Politicians: A Case Study of Jamaica’s First Female Prime Minister, Portia Simpson-Miller

AbstractThis study raises questions about how Jamaica’s first female prime minister, Portia Simpson-Miller, was portrayed in the media. This will be done through content analysis of editorial cartoons, covering the period in which Mrs Simpson-Miller occupied the highest public office in the country. An interesting finding from the study is that, unlike many female political leaders, media coverage of Simpson-Miller focused primarily on her performance as prime minister of Jamaica and less on her physical appearance and gender. The findings from this study will add to the wider discourse on the media’s portrayal of women in politics.

The gender gap in political knowledge revisited: Australia’s Julia Gillard as a natural experiment

Surveys have found a persistent gender gap in political knowledge, with women knowing less about politics than men. This article tests the explanations for the gap using surveys collected in Australia between 2001 and 2016. The results show that the gender gap in knowledge was stable between 2001 and 2007, but declined significantly in 2010, and returning to trend in 2013 and 2016. The decline in 2010 is largely accounted for by the election of Australia’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard, which resulted in women displaying greater media attentiveness. The results confirm other research suggesting that enhanced descriptive representation of women may help to close the gender gap in political knowledge.

Women in Australian Politics: Maintaining the Rage against the Political Machine

Women in Australian Politics: Maintaining the Rage against the Political Machine

Suit of power: fashion, politics, and hegemonic masculinity in Australia

ABSTRACTIn 2010 the Australian Labor Party selected Julia Gillard as leader, making her Australia’s first female Prime Minister. Between 2010 and 2015 there was a renewed focus on issues of gender inequality in the way that women politicians have been treated in Parliament and in the media. Specifically, women in positions of political and institutional power such as Julia Gillard, Julie Bishop, and Quentin Bryce, were critiqued on their clothing choices in the Australian media. In this article, I argue that the Australian media’s attention to the fashion choices of women in politics is problematically gendered, because it subordinates aesthetic features that do not conform to hegemonic masculinity. I argue that in response to the dominant masculine aesthetic norm in politics, women politicians are using their sartorial choices to challenge this marginalisation of femininity in the political sphere.

Live through This

Live through This

In flag-rante: Julia Gillard and the infamous ‘flag scene’ in ABC’s At Home with Julia

Abstract In 2011, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation financed and produced a controversial sitcom based on the life, characteristics, and politics of incumbent Prime Minister Julia Gillard. At Home with Julia (2011) examined Gillard’s private life by fictionalizing her de facto relationship with partner Tim Mathieson. Before, during, and after it aired, the series became a media spectacle as print, digital and broadcast journalists debated the propriety of the parody/satire. Media hype peaked in response to a fleeting scene in which the main characters appear cuddling under the Australian flag. Drawing on scholarship about postfeminism, this article examines the representation of single/unmarried women in popular culture and the characterization of political women in television dramas. The media commentary surrounding At Home with Julia denounced the ‘flag scene’ in the strongest terms, yet this reportage also conveyed an underlying unease towards the series’ candid depiction of sexuality. Most significantly, journalists collectively failed to adequately distinguish between Gillard, the prime minister, and ‘Julia’, the fictional character. Such a failure, this article suggests, enabled and excused the media’s subsequent and far more visceral sexualization of Australia’s first female prime minister. Although the public clearly understood the fictional premise of At Home with Julia, the Australian media fabricated a ‘sex’ scandal that came to be read onto the body of Gillard herself.

“[It] does not explain everything … , nor does it explain nothing … it explains some things”: Australia's first female Prime Minister and the dilemma of gender

Despite advances in the representation of women in positions of leadership, gender-based inequalities persist. A particular dilemma for female leaders concerns whether to acknowledge, or avoid talking about, their experiences of gender and gender inequality in public life. Routinely, women who confront such discrimination experience social and personal repercussions; however, those who remain silent are often criticised for failing to support women. This article takes a discursive psychological approach to accounts from Australia's first female Prime Minister of the role of gender in her leadership. Following her controversial ‘Sexism and Misogyny’ speech in the Australian parliament (2012), Julia Gillard addressed this topic repeatedly in public interviews and speeches, and these materials constitute the data for analysis. We describe the complex and flexible nature of the discursive work required in navigating topics of gender and discrimination, looking in detail at how Gillard routinely accounted for gender as relevant – or not – to her political leadership, and how her identity was constructed as part of that process.

‘Dressing up’ two democratic First Ladies: Fashion as political performance in America

Abstract An American First Lady, argues Karin Vasby Anderson, ‘influences conceptions of American womanhood’ and by ‘virtue of their husband’s elections[,] First Ladies become sites for the symbolic negotiation of female identity’. The process of negotiation in female identity appears in various forms after women assume political power, for example: Golda Meir in Israel, Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom, Indira Gandhi in India and most recently, Australia’s first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard (2010–13). While the position of First Lady is unique to American politics, the ways in which Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama each rejected a ‘suitably feminine’ image provides an important lesson for all women in power. Therefore, we argue here that this analysis of two Democratic American First Ladies and their employment or disregard of fashion informs the gender-based and race-based issues affecting women in political leadership through their choices in dress. When ‘dressing up’ both Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama struggled with issues of individual identity, subjectivity and power, and negotiated their First Lady roles in their fashion.

Cameron and Big Society. May and Shared Society. Same Party : Two Visions ?

The second female Prime Minister in the history of Britain, Theresa May, from the outset, seemed eager to distance herself from her famous female predecessor and thus avoid easy parallels. She also seemed just as eager to distance herself from her direct predecessor, David Cameron (2010-16). Was this distance the result of Theresa May incarnating an altogether new type of Conservatism or simply an electoral tool to win over the voters who had expressed their discontent in the June 2016 referendum ? For the purpose of this article, the focus will not be on general Conservative ideology but rather on the specific ideas which influenced the social and welfare policies of the recent Conservative governments. We shall do this through a comparative study of Cameron’s Big Society and May’s Shared Society. We shall also consider whether they are both influenced by Thatcherism. Our hypothesis is that whilst Mayism is different from Thatcherism in many respects, it is not different in its attitude to the poor, in spite of a very different rhetoric about society. For this same reason, there is a definite ideological proximity with Cameron’s Conservatism and his social vision, which were also influenced by Thatcherism.

Effects of female political leaders and child socialisation on Gender-Based Violence in India

This paper studies the risk of domestic violence between husband & wife in India, and the acceptance or rejection of such violence. It investigates how child socialisation influences a person’s attitudes and behaviour in adult life, via a maladaptive pathway. Specifically, it tests the hypothesis that attitudes of men to domestic violence are influenced by whether or not a female politician took on a powerful political role, when they were about 5 years old. Empirical evidence is reported, from ‘Demographic and Health Surveys’ in India. Results indicate that election of a female Prime Minister or President does appear to affect boys; such effects can be detected at the time of interview, sometimes decades after the election of a female leader. This paper does not test effects of childhood socialisation on girls.

Conceptualizing and Measuring Women's Political Leadership: From Presence to Balance

Cross-national studies of women's political leadership (WPL) usually focus on female prime ministers and presidents or numbers of women in parliament. While illuminating, these studies fail to provide a comprehensive assessment of WPL in a particular place and time. Addressing this gap in the literature, we assert that WPL is inherently contingent upon the theoretical concepts of “structural power” and “male dominance,” encompassing multiple formal apex political decision-making institutions. In accordance with this perspective, we have constructed a novel women's political leadership index based on collective leadership across judicial (high court judges), executive (cabinet ministers), and legislative (parliamentary committee chairs) branches of governments to capture both thepresenceof women among political leaders and theirbalanceacross institutions. Applying our index to 21 diverse territories in Asia, we demonstrate the utility of our approach through a series of country case studies illustrating four prominent patterns of WPL: exclusion, illusion, imbalance, and balance. We conclude by discussing the potential benefits of globally expanding the scope of the index.