When Will Girls Run the World?

‘Tis the season for strange presidential campaign announcements. Texas Senator Ted Cruz declared his candidacy for the highest office in the land to an auditorium full of Liberty University students who were compelled to attend. In a fitting act of rebellion, some wore “Stand with Rand” t-shirts to the event.

Next up was the Kentucky Senator himself, whose announcement drew merciless criticism from Jon Stewart for the large numbers of warm-up speakers that preceded it. Here, the funniest moment was undoubtedly when one such speaker exhorted to the crowd “to elect Rand Paul as the next United States of America.”

Rounding out the Republican newcomers was Marco Rubio, whose announcement was smoother, though his apparent nervousness did come in for criticism. More substantively, one wonders why a candidate who claims to represent new ideas is using a stale slogan from the wreckage of neoconservative foreign policy.

But the main event in the recent slew of presidential announcement was, of course, the long-awaited declaration of former first lady, senator, and secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Strangeness abounded here as well, from her somewhat awkward announcement video to her FedEx-like campaign logo. Again, the English language proved meddlesome: In its first iteration, Clinton’s campaign literature described how she has “fought children and families all her career.”

Compared to the wackiness of the Republican field, Clinton’s candidacy is nothing to laugh at. She appears to have a lock on the Democratic nomination. Thus, barring a catastrophe in the primaries, America may soon have its first female major party candidate for the presidency.

Clinton has long been conscious of her role as a trailblazer for women in American politics. When she lost the Democratic nomination to then-senator Barack Obama in 2008, she said, “Although we were not able to shatter that highest and hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you it has 18 million cracks in it, and the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time.”

That next time is here, and it could not have come soon enough. Congress now has the largest number of women members in its history, but they represent less than twenty percent of the bicameral body. According to one study from last year, given current trends, Congress will not reach gender parity until 2121. As of now, the U.S. Congress ranks 72nd in the world for its level of female representation.  A Clinton presidency would be a powerful sign that more equitable female representation in American politics is a 21st century issue, not a 22nd century one.

How have other countries shattered the most visible glass ceiling in politics and elected a female head of state or head of government? Well, as with the Clinton phenomenon in the United States, sometimes marriage helps. The world’s first democratically elected female head of state was Sirimavo Bandaranaike, who became Prime Minister of what was then Ceylon in 1960 after her husband, the previous Prime Minister, was assassinated. Elsewhere in South Asia, family connections proved helpful in electing Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi of India and Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, both of whom came from powerful political families. In other parts of the world, women from less political backgrounds achieved comparable “firsts.” Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom became Europe’s first female Prime Minister in 1979, and European countries like Iceland, Denmark, and Germany have all elected female heads of government since. Canada briefly had a female Prime Minister in 1993, but has never elected one. Notably, Latin America has done very well in electing women to high offices.

Can any patterns be discerned from the history of elected women leaders? Well, as one Business Insider article on the subject put it, “the facts embody the contradictions everywhere.” South Asia and Latin America are not often thought to be models of gender of equity in the Western imagination, yet they have outpaced much of the world in electing women heads of state and government. Family connections have played a role, but women leaders in these regions have operated as independently as any in the world.

Progressive northern Europe has done well in electing women to high office in recent years, but Britain has not been able to elect another Thatcher and Sweden has never had a female Prime Minister despite having a good track record electing women to Parliament. Canada has better female representation in politics than its southern neighbor, but only slightly.

However one chooses to parse the history and the data, one thing is clear: Women are still underrepresented the world over. Electing a woman as president of the most powerful country on earth would, like the election of Barack Obama, be a powerful signal that abstract notions of equality can become reality. But the varied history of elected female leaders also shows that the election of a woman as head of state or government is not a proxy for measuring a nation’s commitment to feminism. Just as Obama’s election did not usher in a post-racial utopia, the election of Hillary Clinton would not erase inequities, here or abroad. As always, whatever the outcome in 2016, immense work will remain in the struggle for equality.

Nelson L. Barrette '17, a Crimson editorial executive, is a history concentrator in Winthrop House. His column appears on alternate Fridays.