Throughout history, and across cultures and civilizations, some women have played significant political roles in state and government, but their numbers were few and far between. Besides, most of them were thrust to positions of power through royal succession or conjugal or romantic relationship with a king or courtier. But, increasingly, women are rising to the top by dint of their own merit or through popular election.
Women leaders in a men’s world
Throughout history, and across cultures and civilizations, some women have played significant political roles in state and government, but their numbers were few and far between. Besides, most of them were thrust to positions of power through royal succession or conjugal or romantic relationship with a king or courtier. But, increasingly, women are rising to the top by dint of their own merit or through popular election.
The war-ravaged African nation of Liberia has just achieved the distinction of becoming the first African state to have elected a woman, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, as president. The Harvard-educated economist, who leads the Unity Party, beat soccer superstar George Weah.
Europe has had a string of elected female heads of government. Angela Merkel, under whose leadership the Christian Democratic Union had won the most votes in the recent elections, is to be Germany‘s next chancellor.
“Iron lady” Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom led the Conservative Party to victory three times and was prime minister from 1979 to 1990. She held the office longer than anyone in the 20th century. Thatcher is credited with Britain’s economic resurgence and victory in the Falklands War.
The same year that Thatcher left office, Mary Robinson was elected president in the neighbouring Republic of Ireland. She proved a remarkably good president, earning the praise of her predecessor, Brian Lenihan, who said that she was a better president than he ever could have been.
Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway was three times prime minister in the 1980s and 1990s. She entered the Norwegian government in 1974 at the age of 35 as environment minister and became prime minister at 41, a record in Norway.
It is a tribute to Gro Brundtland’s personality that her husband has titled his two books “Married to Gro” and “Still married to Gro”, both best-sellers. Her great popularity prompted some cartoonists to just draw her shoes and ankles and show the other politicians standing around her feet.
Yet another name that comes to mind is that of Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974. Born in Ukraine but raised in the US, she had served as minister of labour and of foreign affairs before leading her Labour Party to victory in the elections. Meir led her country during the 1973 war with Egypt.
Violeta de Chamorro of Nicaragua also deserves mention. Taking charge of her husband’s newspaper in 1978 following his assassination, she carried forward his struggle and, in 1990, was elected the first woman president of a central American nation.
New Zealand has had two successive women prime ministers in the last ten years. Jenny Shipley was succeeded in 1999 by Helen Clark, the current prime minister. In 1893 New Zealand became the first country in the world to allow women to vote. A few years ago, all the top five constitutional positions in the country were occupied by women.
Among the Muslim countries only Turkey has had a woman prime minister in her own right, so to speak. Tansu Ciller headed a coalition government from 1993 to 1996.
Some countries, including the four major South Asian countries, have had women heads of government as a kind of dynastic succession, winning their first election essentially through kinship to a deceased male leader rather than independent merit.
The first such instance was that of Sirimavo Bandarnaike, who became the first elected female head of government in the world in 1960. She won the elections in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) a few months after the assassination of her husband, Solomon Bandarnaike, who was prime minister from 1956 to 1959.
Sirimavo was defeated in the 1965 elections, but returned in 1970, remaining prime minister until 1977. Dubbed the “weeping widow” because of her tendency to burst into tears while talking about her husband, she was ruthless in the pursuit of her political agenda.
In 1994 her daughter Chandrika Kumaratunga was elected prime minister. Soon she changed the constitution in favour of a presidential system, installed herself as president and appointed her 78-year old mother as a figurehead prime minister. Sirimavo reluctantly resigned in 2000 due to ill health, and died the same year at the age of 84.
Indira Gandhi, the sole child of Jawaharlal Nehru, prime minister of India from 1947 till his death in 1964, became prime minister in 1966. Defeated in elections in 1977, she returned with a bang three years later. Because of her dominating personality, she was sometimes referred to as “the only man” in her cabinet. During the 1971 war with Pakistan she led India with aplomb and skill on the diplomatic and military fronts.
Bangladesh, at whose birth Indira acted as a sort of midwife, has seen two women prime ministers. The assassination in 1981 of President Ziaur Rahman transformed his widow Khaleda Zia from housewife to politician. She was elected prime minister in 1991.
Khaleda lost the elections five years later to another heir to a political dynasty. The daughter of the founding father and first prime minister, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who was assassinated in 1975, Hasina Wajed was elected prime minister in 1996. Khaleda took revenge in 2001 by defeating Hasina Wajed and getting a second stint as prime minister, with Hasina now being the leader of the opposition.
In Pakistan, in spite of opposition from the “Establishment”, Benazir Bhutto was twice elected prime minister (1988-90, 1993-96) by people who still cherished the memory of her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, president and prime minister from 1971 to 1977. He had been deposed and hanged by a military dictator.
In the Philippines, Corazon Aquino was thrown into the limelight after her husband, senator Benigno Aquino, was assassinated as he was disembarking from a plane on his return from exile in the US in 1983. A widely-held belief that the assassination had been ordered by the government of Ferdinand Marcos led to his overthrow through a popular uprising, which installed the widow as president. The current president, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, is the daughter of a former president, Diosdado Macapagal (1961 to 1965).
In Indonesia, Megawati Sukarnoputri (literally “daughter of Sukarno”) became president in 2001. Although her party had won the most votes in the elections held in 1999, her sole claim to fame was her relationship to Indonesia’s first president Sukarno. She hardly ever spoke, not because she was a woman of few words, but because she had little or nothing to say. Shocked by her election defeat in 2004, Megawati refused to acknowledge her successor or even to take part in his inauguration ceremony.
Isabel Peron rose from nightclub dancer to become president of Argentina. A highly controversial figure, she ran for vice-president on the winning presidential ticket of her husband Juan Peron in 1973. When President Juan Peron died the following year, Vice-President Isabel Peron succeeded him to become the world’s first woman president. After a brief chaotic rule, marred by the influence of her occultist, Rasputin-like friend José López Rega, she was deposed in 1976 by the military.
Besides the above-mentioned, in the recent past about twenty other countries around the world have either elected or appointed women as head of government. Like their male counterparts, women leaders come in varying grades, ranging from excellent to poor. But they do prove that, what men can do, women can too.
(Published in Daily Times, 17 November 2005)
Women are more than a match
Few will dispute that ours is a man’s world, where women have existed for the service, comfort and pleasure of men and to help with procreation. Every religion, without exception, apportions to women a place of subordination to man.
In much of the world girls still stay home to help their mothers with household chores while their brothers go to school. It is normal in most homes, even now, for women to east last and eat least. In many societies, a man has been entitled to multiple wives, de facto where not de jure. A husband is allowed to discipline his wife by various means, including corporal punishment. Greater muscle power, the only real advantage that man has in relation to woman, proved very useful for the purpose.
Domestic violence against women, wife-beating to be precise, is perhaps the most common, widespread and universal of crimes. Yet, in many countries, it is not even a cognizable offence. And, with the exception of the contemporary West, the state and society turn a blind eye to the bashing of women. In Pakistan women are beaten and, occasionally, killed to preserve the “honour” of family and clan.
Against such adverse conditions, women have done very well indeed. It was only in 1893 that women anywhere in the world were allowed to vote. That distinction goes to tiny New Zealand. In just over hundred years, women occupied all the five top positions there, namely, prime minister, leader of the opposition, governor general, auditor general and CEO of the largest private company.
The Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 and 2004 was awarded to women, Shirin Ebadi of Iran, for “her efforts for democracy and human rights, especially the rights of women and children”, and Wangari Maathai of Kenya, for “her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace”.
Just over a decade earlier, in 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi had been honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize for her “non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights” in Burma. For the sake of democracy and human rights in her country, this diminutive woman has braved the military junta and earned the ire of the generals. She refuses to abandon her people despite being incarcerated by the regime for over a decade and separated from her two sons and husband, who has since died.
In the United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher proved herself to be among the best prime ministers ever. She led an economic resurgence which reversed the decline which had set in over the previous decade or more. While performing as a competent prime minister, she was still able to play the role of a wife and mother, occasionally cook dinner for the family and make tea for visitors.
India’s battered national pride was restored in 1971 by a female prime minister, Indira Gandhi, after the military disaster of the 1962 war with China and the less-than-impressive performance against Pakistan in the 1965 war.
In the last ten years two women have occupied two of the most important positions in the US government and served the country with great distinction. In 1997, Madeleine Albright, a refugee from Czechoslovakia and a divorced mother of three daughters, became the 64thUS secretary of state, the first woman to occupy the position.
Four years later, Condoleeza Rice, an American of African descent, achieved the distinction of becoming the first woman to occupy the position of National Security Advisor under President George Bush. Like Henry Kissinger three decades earlier, her performance in that position was so impressive that the president moved her to the more high profile post of secretary of state in his second administration.
Among the poor and working class of Argentina, Evita Peron wielded a charismatic influence that has few historical parallels. She is believed to have exercised more power than anyone else in the country, with the sole exception of her husband, President Juan Peron. The poor loved her for she built homes, hospitals, schools and found jobs for thousands of Argentinians. During Peron’s re-election rally in 1951, more than a million people stood calling for “Eva” to accept nomination as vice president. She did, but the military, wary of her popularity, forced Peron to remove her from the nomination. She died the following year, mourned by the masses, but despised by the upper classes.
The name of Florence Nightingale is legendary, remembered for her work as a nurse during the Crimean War (1854-56) and her contribution in improving the unsanitary conditions in military field hospitals. An accomplished mathematician, she compiled statistical data to demonstrate that better hygienic conditions reduced mortality in hospitals. At the time, injured soldiers were seven times more likely to die from disease in hospital than on the battlefield. She soon reduced the mortality rate from 60% to 42.7% and further to 2.2%.
During the mid-nineteenth century nursing was not considered a suitable profession for “respectable” women, for this humanitarian vocation had a rather unsavoury reputation. In 1860, financed by the Nightingale Fund, the NightingaleTraining School and Home for Nurses opened in London with 10 students. Florence Nightingale is credited with transforming nursing from its disreputable past into a respectable profession, where men now compete with women.
And who has not heard of Mother Teresa, the Albanian woman who devoted her entire adult life to help the poorest of the poor of Calcutta in India. Affectionately referred to as the “saint of the gutters” and “angel of mercy” she served the wretched of the earth till her death at the age of 87, from Calcutta to New York, by creating a global network of homes for the poor, afflicted and discarded of society, from lepers to AIDS victims.
Mother Teresa’s frail but long hands of compassion reached as far as Ethiopia and South Africa. In 1982, at the height of the siege in Beirut, she rescued 37 children trapped in a frontline hospital by brokering a temporary cease-fire between the Israeli army and Palestinian guerillas. By 1996, she was operating 517 missions in more than 100 countries.
There is not a profession or vocation in which women have not made an impression, particularly in the West. In Pakistan, girls usually top the combined lists of results for both secondary school and higher secondary exams, despite the distraction of household chores, from which there is no escape for most. In the West, too, girls achieve better averages in evaluations of comparative numeracy and literacy skills.
Women are on the frontlines of war zones, as military combatants, reporters, doctors and charity workers. Many working women all over the world, including Pakistan, balance the demands of the workplace with their duties as wife, mother, sister and daughter with a skill and stamina – and a smile – that can leave all but the most perverse of men awestruck.
In everything they do, women are more than a match for men. I concluded my last article by saying “what men can do, women can too”. To be honest, I might have said, what men can do, women can do even better.
(Published in Daily Times, 24 November 2005)
Face the facts on treatment of women
I had not intended to write about women for a third consecutive week, but an e-mail from a US-based male reader has prompted me to do so. He has objected to my lack of mention of the United States where, according to him, “males are killing their wives and girlfriends”.
It is no secret that women are bashed in the US as in other western countries, which is why I referred to domestic violence as the “most common, widespread and universal of crimes”. That’s also the reason why the Western countries, the US included, take a serious view of domestic violence, compile and release the relevant statistics, educate the public about this scourge, rescue and assist victims, and routinely prosecute and convict offenders.
But, to the best of my knowledge, women are not beaten, let alone killed in the US to defend the “honour” of clan or family. Nor are they given in marriage to settle disputes, as compensation for crimes, or forbidden to marry men of their choice.
Drunken, sadistic or just plain bad men in the West do bash their wives, partners and girlfriends, sometimes in fits of rage and at other times in a premeditated manner. But I have not read or heard of a woman’s father and brother or brothers joining forces, sometimes assisted by friends or female relatives, to bash, mutilate or kill her, as occurs in Pakistan with sickening regularity.
Even “honour killing” is not exclusive to Pakistan. It does occur in some parts of India as well as in some Arab and Central Asian countries. But that is neither a justification nor a mitigating circumstance. In addition to the infamous practice of “honour killing” or other forms of punishment meted out to “disobedient” women in Pakistan, there is the more widespread practice of Vinni.
According to an article by Juliette Terzieff quoting Humaira Awais Shahid, an MPA from Punjab, it is a centuries-old practice in Pakistan and parts of Afghanistan of giving women into marriage as compensation in cases of murder, territorial disputes or other serious disagreements.
Males of the “aggrieved” party seek young virgin girls as compensation for crime and to permanently tarnish the honour of the “guilty family”. In exchange, the accused men escape prosecution and punishment. This custom is also known as swara in the northern areas of Pakistan.
Women given in vinni live in a state of perpetual bondage. Denied proper food, clothing and medical care, they have the lowest status in their putative husband’s family. Rarely are these “brides” allowed any contact with their parents after the “marriage”. They are sometimes sold off to other members of the host family or are used merely as unpaid servant-mistresses.
“It’s an extension of the old feudal tribal system which holds ‘zar, zamin, zan‘ (money, land, women) as the sources of all conflict, which effectively reduces women to property,” according to Lahore-based criminal lawyer Uzma Saeed. “Often there is not even an official wedding ceremony performed, the woman is just handed over like she was a cow or a buffalo.”
In the West, governments provide and advertise dedicated phone numbers for assistance in cases of domestic violence and police treat such calls with the highest priority. In Pakistan, even bashed and battered women avoid the police for fear of being raped. The latest such instance to come to light is the Sonia Naz incident in which police officials are accused of abducting and raping the hapless woman.
One will recall that some years ago, Bilal Khar, son of Ghulam Mustafa Khar, landlord of Tehmina’s “my feudal lord” fame, former member of parliament, chief minister and governor of the Punjab, totally disfigured the face of his estranged wife Fakhra by pouring acid on her, but was acquitted of the charge because prosecution witnesses were too scared to testify against such a powerful figure.
Pakistan has many things to commend itself to others. Visitors are awestruck by the country’s natural beauty and the hospitality of its people. Pakistan Handbook by Dave Winter and Ivan Mannheim (1996), for example, has this to say about the country and its people:
“The media paints a bloody picture of violence, danger and fanaticism, but prepare yourself rather for a lesson in human warmth, generosity and hospitality. . . .Everyone paints a picture of stunning natural scenery, an almost unbelievable range of landscapes and environments, mighty rivers, huge deserts, fertile plains, thick forests and towering mountains. And, for once, nobody has got it wrong.”
But attitude to women is not one of the virtues or graces of Pakistanis. Ask any foreigner. I recall an American professor who spent two years teaching in Pakistan. He used to say that he loved living in Pakistan except whenever he went out with his wife, when he felt like killing some people.
A Malaysian diplomat whom I met in Morocco, who had previously been posted to Islamabad, never tired of praising Pakistan, even to Moroccans, but complained to me about the way women were treated on our streets and in bazaars. He was drawing from the experiences of Malaysian, not Pakistani, women!
And if you think foreigners are lying to damage Pakistan’s reputation, take any day’s newspaper. Here is a random sampling from The Daily Times:
27th November: “Musakhel police arrested on Saturday the fathers of the brides and grooms involved in Vani weddings related to a murder committed in 1988. Muhammad Nawaz of the Azeem Khel tribe was killed on the suspicion of stealing goats in 1988. After a two-year trial the parties agreed to compromise. The five alleged murderers agreed to pay cash and five women as compensation. All the women were given in Nikah. At the time, two of the five women were old enough to be handed over to the rival party, while the other three were minors. Now they have grown up and their childhood husbands are pressing for the consummation of their marriages”.
29th November: “Bahawalpur Police on Sunday arrested the two brothers who have allegedly amputated their sister’s legs for marrying the person of her choice, while raids are underway to arrest their four accomplices”.
And if you don’t trust Pakistani journalists, ask any woman you know, your wife, sister, cousin, friend, anyone, about their experiences in buses, wagons, markets, streets, colleges and workplace. Even allowing for understatement on account of embarrassment, they are certain to tell you things that will make you ashamed to be a Pakistani male.
And also ask, if you please, Pakistani women who live in the Western countries about their lives there. They are likely to tell you that they feel more safe in their homes, streets, buses, trains, shopping malls, schools, colleges and offices in those countries than they ever could imagine in Pakistan. Barring the rare exception to the rule, they work, travel, shop, walk and play unjostled, unhassled and unmolested, in peace, dignity, equality and safety.
(Published in Daily Times, 1 December 2005)