Late on the evening of Friday, August 23, 2024, the United States Democratic Party gave its full and enthusiastic support to Vice President Kamala Harris as its candidate for the American presidency. As Peter Baker, a seasoned analysts who works for The New York Times, wrote in the main front page story of the paper’s issue of August 24, “Harris emerged from her nominating convention with a burst of momentum that Democrats hardly expected barely a month ago, when they thought that they would be tethered to a possibly doomed re-election bid by President Biden. She has rejuvenated a once demoralized party and given a jolt of optimism to Democrats who now see victory within reach.”
The election to choose the next American president would be held on November 5, 2024 – 74 days after the Democratic National Convention meeting in Chicago offered the party’s leadership to Harris. If elected, the United States would join dozens of other countries across the globe that have voted for women to become the heads of their states. The United States has fallen below 70 countries in the Council on Foreign Relations’ Women’s Power Index which ranks countries on their progress toward gender parity in political participation.
Before listing the female leaders who in the past have managed to ascend to the top of the political ladder in their countries, I will briefly look at how Pakistani women have fared in the political field. Most notable example of a woman reaching the top is Benazir Bhutto who was prime minister on three separate occasions. Most political analysts believed that she and her political organisation, Pakistan People’s Party, the PPP, would have won the elections General Pervez Musharraf had agreed to hold in the fall of 2007. That promise was made in protracted negotiations held with Bhutto while she had located herself in London. She returned to a rousing reception at the airport in Karachi and then went on to Islamabad to begin her campaign. She launched her campaign by addressing a largely attended public meeting at Liaquat Bagh. The Bagh carries the name Liaquat in memory of Liaquat Ali Khan, the country’s first prime minister, who was killed by Said Akbar while the popular leader was addressing a public meeting on October 16, 1951. Bhutto met the same fate at the same place half a century later. As she was concluding her remarks, she was gunned down by a man who had managed to bring a rifle to the meeting site. The motive behind the killing has been investigated but not determined.
Maryam Nawaz Sharif, currently the chief minister of Punjab, Pakistan’s largest province, is another woman who has climbed the political ladder. Like Benazir Bhutto she is also the product of what is called “dynastic politics” in Pakistan. The two women reached the pinnacle of political power through inheritance. Benazir Bhutto was the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who after serving for a decade in the cabinet headed by Field Marshal Ayub Khan, Pakistan’s first military leader, fell out and formed his own political party, the PPP, which came to power after the national elections of 1970. Maryam Nawaz Sharif also belongs to a political family; her father, Mian Nawaz Sharif, served as prime minister before losing his position to a military coup.
According to an analysis published by The New York Times, under the title “Around the world, women, women rule, and the U.S. may soon catch up”. The reference to “catch up” is to the possibility that Kamala Harris who was voted to head the Democratic Party in a convention held in Chicago for four days – from August 19 to August 23 – may defeat Donald Trump, the Republican, in the poll to be held on November 5, 2024.
Sri Lanka’s Sirimavo Bandaranaike was the first woman to become the head of her state. She became prime minister in 1960 after the assassination of her husband. She stayed in that position for several years. Next to follow was Israel’s Golda Meir, who led her country during the 1973 Arab-Israel war. Israel’s founding father David Ben-Gurion, called her “the best man in the government”. She was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, and immigrated to Milwaukee in the United States where she lived until she moved to Palestine under the British mandate in1921. She resigned after she was criticised for the way she handled the 1973 war between Israel and the Palestinians.
Next was Argentine’s Isabel Peron who inherited political power from her husband who brought socialism to his country. Next in line of powerful female leaders was Elisabeth Domitien who was appointed as the Central African Republic’s prime minister in 1975.
Margaret Thatcher led her political party, the Tories, to victory in the general elections of 1979. She not only rose without following a powerful spouse but on her own. Since she was uncompromising in the positions she took, she came to be called the “Iron Lady,” the moniker also given to India’s Indira Gandhi who like Benazir Bhutto and now Maryam Nawaz, belonged to a political family. Gandhi became prime minister in 1966 and served her country from that position for 16 years. Her political legacy was mixed since it included 21 months of state of emergency, which most analysts of the Indian political history regard as the country’s darkest period. She was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards for her resolute handling of the rise of “Sikhism” and the demand for the creation of an autonomous Sikh state in the country’s north, bordering Pakistan.
In June 2024, Claudia Sheinbaum became Mexico’s first woman to be elected president. She will assume her office on October 1. Sheinbaum’s electoral triumph stands out as several women who led their countries rose in parliamentary systems. Since 2020, only two presidential systems – Honduras and Mexico – have elected a woman head of state compared with seven women elected in semi-presidential systems in which a president and prime minister share power. In these mixed systems, 27 women have been elected or appointed head of state, notes Julie Ballington, policy adviser on political participation for UN Women, a UN organisation focused on gender equality and women’s empowerment that tracks global data on female leadership.
If Harris is elected president, there is no doubt that it would impact the situation of other women who have ambitions in the political arena.
