Miren Gutiérrez

POLITICS: Is There a Gender-Specific Leadership Style?
By Miren Gutiérrez*

ROME, Jan 9 (IPS) – Is there a female way to lead? Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has raised that possibility in saying that she tries to lead through consensus, not by imposition. “While not wishing to generalise, many women have leadership styles that have been described as ‘empowering leadership’ or ‘consensual leadership’, where they build leadership structures that share responsibilities according to the ‘best fit’, and in doing so, often create new types of leadership,” Ayesha Kajee, researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs and board member of Transparency International’s South Africa chapter, tells IPS.“Since women also tend to discuss problems more openly and utilise ‘group-think’ to seek solutions, such solutions are often more acceptable to teams. Some have described these as inherently female ways of interacting, but these styles can and should be learnt by both men and women leaders.”

An example, Kajee says, is Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who has “clearly indicated that she intends to bring feminine qualities to the Liberian presidency, a very important component in a country which has been decimated and devastated by horrendous crimes and human rights violations.

“But this is not to say that these qualities negate the need for a strong leader in Liberia. She has both — the traditional strength of will, ambition and determination associated with African leaders, which will prevent her being abused by the old boys’ club because she can fight most battles on equal terms with them, and also the nurturing, reconciliatory and healing qualities that her shattered nation requires to rebuild the national spirit and collective human dignity.”

Inevitably, a suggestion of any specifically female style of leadership is controversial.

Joanne Sandler, deputy executive director for programmes at the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), says she is reluctant to buy into the “essentialist argument” that women have a different way of leading.

“Some evidence tends to be true, but you cannot say all women build consensus and men don’t. But I think it is also true that in countries whose parliaments have more than 30 percent of women, where women can more easily access positions of leadership, they tend to get outcomes that address women’s rights more frequently, and other types of rights, so political negotiation is probably vulnerable to gender difference to some extent.”

In places where you have more than 30 percent of women in parliament or congress, “child care policy, security, education, issues that are often associated with women, begin to emerge. I don’t mean that men don’t care about them; but I think that there is evidence that the theory of critical mass is a valid one.”

Charlotte Bunch, executive director of the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers University in the U.S., tells IPS that “there is a more collaborative style of leadership that more women like and find comfortable. And women are more likely to do that, but I don’t call it female’ because some men are like that, while some women aren’t… But it is a cultural construction our world needs more of.”

Men can take the right decisions for women, too. “I think change comes about not only because of who the president is, but also because of who she or he appoints,” says Sandler.

“In Rwanda, a male head of state (Paul Kagame) has been very supportive of a gender equality policy, and as a result Rwanda has the highest percentage of women in the low and high houses of parliament. The combination of a supportive president and more women in key positions transforms the political structure, and then you start seeing changes.”

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En español

POLITICS: Mum, Can a Man be President?
By Miren Gutiérrez*

ROME, Jan 9 (IPS) – “Do you think a man could ever be president?” the little boy in Ireland asks his mother. All his life he has only seen women presidents, currently Mary McAleese.Joanne Sandler, deputy executive director for programmes at the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), tells this little anecdote to show that in some places it can be routine for women to be found in leadership roles.

“In places like Ireland and Finland it is becoming less extraordinary to see a woman in power,” says Sandler. And it is this kind of female power that could bring more women into leadership, she says.

“When you see women in positions of power, in ministries, obviously the self-image of girls changes, and they envision themselves in those places. But that kind of change will take a very long time, though it has started,” she adds.

The change does not necessarily correspond to a nation’s level of economic development.

Italy ranks 84 in the latest Gender Gap Index (GGI) of the World Economic Forum, where the number one marks the smallest gap. That places it behind Bolivia (80), Peru (75) or Armenia (70), even though it is among the world’s biggest economies.

Panama is number 38 among 128 countries surveyed, while Liberia with Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf as president is not ranked. Sri Lanka is ranked 15, the United States 31, Argentina 33, Mongolia 62, Indonesia 81, Nicaragua 90 and Bangladesh 100. The Philippines fares extraordinarily well at number six, after Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland and New Zealand. Pakistan ranks 126, with the biggest gap only after Yemen (128) and Chad (127).

Like national wealth, personal wealth is not an essential pre-requisite. “There is not a relationship between more money and less gender discrimination,” says Sandler. “Money and power have an influence in those women achieving power. But money alone doesn’t explain it.

“Look at the elections in Liberia. A woman who has education, a former employee of the World Bank and the U.N., with an impressive resume, against a man who had no high school education, a soccer player (George Weah). Imagine the opposite: against a man with Johnson-Sirleaf’s background, would a woman with Weah’s credentials be a serious contender? To be a contender for high level political office, women have to bring a lot of extra qualities in order to get into the race. They need the same things as a man, plus others.”

Ayesha Kajee, researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs and board member of Transparency International’s South Africa chapter, says “money is most certainly a partial equaliser for women, in terms of access — access to education, capital, property and opportunity. But even amongst wealthy elites, men tend to wield considerably more power than women. Thus, wealth does not guarantee equity between men and women.”

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En español

POLITICS: For Women, Leaning Doesn’t Make For Leading
By Miren Gutierrez**

ROME, Jan 9 (IPS) – “A woman who enters politics changes; a thousand women who enter politics change politics,” Chilean President Michelle Bachelet told the Spanish television channel TVE in a recent interview.It is the former that seems to ring more true. Most powerful women, particularly though not only in developing countries, are or have been members of elite families: widows, daughters, wives of powerful men, in societies where women do not have equal access to most things.

The list of female rulers who have derived their leadership from men is a long and telling one.

Mireya Moscoso (president of Panama from 1999-2004) was widow of three times former president Arnulfo Arias (who was deposed each time by the military). Before her, Isabel Martínez de Perón was president of Argentina from 1974-1976, following the death of her husband, President Juan Domingo Perón. Argentina has just elected its second woman president: Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who succeeded her husband Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) in December.

The success — or succession — of women began in Asia in recent times with Sühbaataryn Yanjmaa, widow of Mongolian hero Sühbaatar. She was the equivalent of head of state from Sept. 23, 1953 to Jul. 7, 1954. “If we consider such a post as having a real ruling status, she would have been (excepting queens) the absolute first woman political ruler in contemporary history,” says Zárate’s Political Collections (ZPC), a record of worldwide leadership.

Corazon Aquino was president of the Philippines from 1986 to 1992, after her husband Benigno Aquino — the leader of the opposition against dictator Ferdinand Marcos — was assassinated. Chandrika Kumaratunga, Sri Lankan president from 1994-2005, followed in the footsteps of her mother Sirimavo Bandaranaike, three times prime minister, a rare instance of a woman taking leadership after another female family member.

Benazir Bhutto, assassinated Dec. 27, was Pakistani prime minister from 1988-1990 and again from 1993-1996. She was the daughter of former premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of Sukarno (Indonesia’s first post-colonial president 1945-1967), led the world’s largest Muslim country from 2001-2004, and is expected to seek the post again in 2009. In Bangladesh, arch-enemies Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia have both served as prime ministers and as heads of the two largest political parties. Hasina’s late father and Zia’s late husband ran the country at different times.

“These women share dynastic origins and ‘inherited’ political leadership,” says the German government-funded research report ‘Dynasties and Female Leadership in Asia’.

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En español