On a recent speaking tour in Australia, Barack Obama offered up his idea on how to turn the tide on more than a decade of democratic erosion, to steer the world on to a path of sustainability and peace.
“I am actually convinced that if we could try an experiment in which every country on Earth was run by women for just two years … I am confident the world would tilt in a better direction.”
Obama’s interviewer – former Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop – replied saying female leaders would only need six months. Data, however, shows that even the far more modest goal of gender parity in global leadership remains distant.
Fewer than a third of the UN’s 193 member states have ever had a female leader*, and while the last two decades have seen a huge proportional rise in the number of women at the top of global politics, the actual numbers remain incredibly low.
Currently, just 12 UN member states have female leaders, down from 17 in 2022. Research from UN Women suggests that at the current rate, gender equality at the highest positions of power will not be reached for another 130 years.
In recent years, the growth in the number of female leaders around the world has plateaued and in 2023, a number of prominent female leaders have left office to be replaced by men.
In January, Jacinda Ardern resigned as prime minister of New Zealand saying she “no longer had enough in the tank” to do the job. Moldova’s Natalia Gavrilita quit as prime minister in February, blaming a series of crises caused by “Russian aggression”.
Nicola Sturgeon – while not represented in the above data as she was not the leader of a UN member state – stood down in February after more than eight years as Scotland’s first minister, saying the “time was right”.
Then on Sunday, Sanna Marin lost a closely fought election in Finland, bringing to an end her time as the world’s youngest prime minister.
Pressures of power
All of these leaders left high office for very different reasons, but Dr Federica Caso, a lecturer in international relations at La Trobe University, warns that growing militarisation across the world due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could spell uncertainty for all female leaders around the world.
“Sanna Marin pushed for Finland to enter Nato … but generally speaking, voters tend to see men as more reliable on defence and security,” she says.
A 2018 survey from Pew Research partly bears this out. When asked, the majority of US voters said there was no difference between male and female political leaders. The only exceptions were in areas such as education and healthcare – where women were deemed to be more effective – and national security and defence – where men were thought to do a better job.
Caso also says that women also come up against stereotypical ideas of how they should behave, particularly from the media.
Ardern faced personal attacks unprecedented in New Zealand politics. In 2022, police reported that threats against the prime minister had nearly tripled over three years. In her resignation announcement, Ardern said that while threats to her safety were not the basis of her decision to quit, they did “have an impact.”
Marin suffered intrusive and often sexist scrutiny of her private life and behaviour, perhaps most prominently while facing an official inquiry after video emerged showing her drinking and dancing with friends.
Sexist media coverage can have an effect on female leaders’ ability to fundraise and secure donations for election campaigns, Caso says.
“It’s hard to keep swimming against the flow when you’re constantly being challenged on your gender, as opposed to your policies.”
The unequal pressures of family commitments and caring responsibilities are also held up as a potential reason that the tenure of female leader – a median length of 2.1 years according to Pew Research – is so short.
“We don’t want to generalise, but even at the top of politics the labour of care work still often falls on women,” says Caso.
An upside down world
Research from the European parliament in 2021 shows that gender-equal societies enjoy better health, stronger economic growth and higher security.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, female populations have far better outcomes when they are represented in decision-making roles. For instance, in Norway, a study found a direct relationship between the presence of women on municipal councils and the level of childcare coverage on offer.
Caso warns of not lumping women into a single group, but says “studies also suggest that women tend to negotiate and mediate more, so when there are difficult positions on the table, they tend to be more diplomatic”.
While the number of female foreign ministers around the world is actually several times higher than the number of female leaders, significant barriers remain. Data from UN Women shows that women are still far more likely to be given cabinet portfolios related to family and children’s affairs or women and gender equality than foreign affairs, defence or economic positions.
That means the traditional path to power – rising up through government and senior cabinet positions – remains more difficult for women to traverse.
Some countries have enacted gender quotas in the hope of progressing equal representation. A 2021 UN study found that countries that legislated candidate quotas saw an uptick in women’s representation. But the statistics remain stark: just 13 countries have cabinets that have reached gender parity. Representation in national parliaments is even more unequal: as of 2023 just six countries have parliaments that contain 50% or more women.
For now, Obama’s dream of women running the world for two years remains distant, but many experts have even criticised this as far too simplistic.
“After two years you would see that women are not a homogenous category,” says Caso. “But it’s good in some respects, as it would turn the world upside down.”
* A leader is defined as the person who wields executive power and has overall responsibility for the running of a country. In some cases this will be a head of state or president, like the US or France, in others it will be a head of government, like the UK or Australia. The above data also only includes countries represented in the UN, so leaders such as Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen and Scotland’s recent first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, are not included.
