Women are second to none when it comes to leadership qualities

Dec 03, 2013 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
Anyone who feels that women are the weaker sex is making a serious mistake. Women are undoubtedly the fairer sex but when it comes to leadership qualities, they are second to none.
This power play is manifesting itself on the international stage with several women who have stolen the spotlight and in the process have risen to the political helm in several countries including Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel has won re-election and is presiding over one of the largest European economies.
The same is true of neighbouring Brazil which has a woman President in the person of Dilma Rousseff. Brazil is the strongest economy in this hemisphere, and for that matter, the sixth largest economy in the world. And if the polls are anything to go by, the United States is on its way to having its first woman presidential candidate and quite possibly the country’s first woman president in its long and eventful history when the next presidential elections are held. I refer to no other than Mrs. Hillary Clinton.
Our own former President Mrs. Janet Jagan was named by the prestigious TIME MAGAZINE as one of 16 of the most “rebellious” woman of all time in the world. Right now, as I write this article, two women presidential contenders are at each other’s throats politically in Bangladesh for political supremacy.
The so-called glass ceiling, from all appearances has been broken, and women in so-called traditional societies such as India, Pakistan, Thailand and as I mentioned earlier, Bangladesh, have all reached, at one time or the other, the political pinnacle. Liberia has a woman president and so do several other countries in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. In Honduras, a woman presidential contender gave her male counterpart a run for his money in recent presidential elections.
The focus of this article, however, is on the recently concluded presidential elections in Chile where two of the top presidential candidates were women. One is the left-leaning ex-President Michelle Bachelet and the other, her right-wing rival Evelyn Matthei.
The recent polls did not provide any of the two candidates with enough votes to avoid a run-off but from all indications, Ms. Bachelet is widely expected to win the contest when it is held.
It is the early political history and background of these two women presidential contenders that I found intriguing. They went to the same primary school and played together as kids. Their fathers were close friends and served together in the Chilean air force until the military coup which changed fortunes of both men and their respective families in contrasting ways. One went on to become a major player in the military junta which seized power in September 11, 1973, and the other was made to languish in confinement on treason charges until his death on March 12, 1974.
Both women grew up with politics in their blood. In the end, it was poetic justice for Ms. Bachelet, who won the presidency first in 2006, to become the first female President of Chile, and from all indications she is well poised to repeat that performance when the soon-to-be presidential run-off is held. In doing so, she is set to become the first Chilean in more than fifty years to serve a second term in office.
Chile, like so many countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, is now a full-fledged democracy, having shed its authoritarian and dictatorial past. The gender gap is closing in, thanks to much greater education access, and women are increasingly taking their rightful place as policy-makers and not policy-takers as in bygone years.
Hydar Ally

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