Is it enough to just have female heads of state?

Those of us who learnt of or remember the radio address of the then first lady of the United States, Laura Bush, after 9/11, know that incidents of violence against Muslim women by Muslim men is often latched onto by certain segments of Western media for Islamophobic aims. As the academic Lila Abu-Lughod points out in an article titled Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?, "there was the blurring of the very separate causes in Afghanistan of women's continuing malnutrition, poverty, and ill health, and their more recent exclusion under the Taliban from employment, schooling, and the joys of wearing nail polish".

My point in referring to Laura Bush's speech is not to say that there is a connection to this and the recent election of Claudia Sheinbaum as Mexico's first female president in 200 years, but rather that this points out a crucial mechanism deployed to weaponise a particular brand of feminism. It is the kind of feminism where women are lauded for occupying the posts that only men could once hold, while the systems that subjugated women in the first place largely remain intact. In the case of Laura Bush, this advancement of women's rights was promoted to justify her husband's decision to invade Afghanistan. As we now know, George Bush's actions led to a war that lasted 20 years, devastated Afghanistan, and ended in a resurgence of the Taliban during the presidency of Joe Biden.

While there are countless discussions in cafes and internet forums of glass ceilings and sticky floors, there are still women who are not even able to be anywhere near the room. These women can include a Mexican woman unable to cross the border into USA even as her life is endangered, or a Bangladeshi woman repeatedly gang-raped by loan sharks for Tk 20,000.

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Women in leadership

Those of us in South Asian countries know particularly well that having a female head of state does not necessarily coincide with advances for women. As was noted in the magazine Himal South Asian in a 2021 article, "Daughters and wives of the grand political dynasties of the Subcontinent—the Bandaranaikes, Bhuttos, Nehru-Gandhis, Rahmans and Zias—have come to represent the face of "female leadership" even though their regimes were never notable for advancing the rights of women in their respective countries."

We have seen that women who are able to helm a country are often able to do so through their associations with powerful men, typically husbands and fathers, who themselves were heads of state.

Much like the South Asian female heads of state, Sheinbaum too has a long-standing connection to a powerful man who became head of state, though it is important to stress that unlike the South Asian examples, her relationship is a strictly professional one. It remains essential to not forget that despite this historic win, there are those who believe she won because she claims she will continue the work of her mentor and her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, better known as AMLO. AMLO's popularity makes him akin to a figure such as the former US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), who remains the only US president to have been elected four times. Mexico's constitution has a limit on how many times one may become president, with one person getting no more than a single six-year term.

There is an understandable impulse to rejoice when a woman is in one of the most influential positions in a nation. However, it must be tempered so as to properly evaluate the true extent of her authority, and whether her rule will bring lasting benefits to the majority.

A woman head of state deserves what every head of state does: a fair evaluation. And this means not only being aware of hypercriticism often directed at women for being women, but not overcorrecting in the wrong direction and glossing over actions that are harmful.

The leading candidates in the 2024 Mexican election were both women. One had Jewish roots, the other had indigenous roots. In terms of the identity of the candidates, the election would have been ground-breaking regardless. While Sheinbaum's gender has become a focal point, not least because she herself has stressed this saying, "I've said it from the start, this is not just about me getting [to the top office], it's about all of us getting here," we must not let this cloud our judgment. Seeing a woman head of state brings hope in many feminists.

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Closing the gender gap in women's political empowerment

However, we have seen time and again, throughout history and in the modern age, that politicians and political parties can weaponise political labels that have gained traction in the public without actually adhering to any of the values that are espoused in the label. As we saw again with the suddenly popular political compass test on the internet in 2021, labels provide an easy marketable method to appeal to people's emotions by using a word with a history and heavy denotations, even if one's actions and rhetoric does not align with the label one espouses.

In neoliberalism particularly, marketable quippy terms allow for an easy marketable persona who can be sold to millions while evading the questions that require detailed information and a considerable amount of thinking. This was the case with the election campaign of Hillary Clinton, where her womanhood was emphasised over and over in speeches and even music videos made specifically to promote Clinton, while many of Clinton's policy positions that deserved criticism—such as her support of Israel's apartheid regime—remained unscrutinised.

"Feminism" has become one of these labels. A celebrity may call themself a feminist and say that they believe in equality because it allows them to come across as socially conscious, but it does not tell their followers anything about difficult but very pressing matters such as their stance on the incarceration of women, homelessness, the attack on transwomen, or the use of child labour by a brand that endorses them. This kind of branding is now frequently used by politicians. They can thus project an image of themselves as strong, moral people without doing or even promising much to alleviate the conditions of the masses suffering under systemic failures. Academic Catherine Rottenberg's words "the evisceration of feminism of its emancipatory potential" comes to mind when I think of how feminism has become a hefty tool in the campaigns of women politicians not willing to disturb existing powers.

All this is in no way to state that the female heads of state who make it to the top positions, either through their policy stances or their associations, are devoid of talent and skill, but that they were often able to get to that position because they do not harm the status quo, just as is the case with many male politicians in nations where elections can be, to put it lightly, a fraught time.

Centuries of male rule has not led to advancements for women, severe and organised agitations from large groups of women did. This, however, does not mean that there is a guarantee that "female leadership" will end women's suffering.

A female head of state does not automatically equal progress for all women. It should not make us forget that much work needs to be done for the women we think of when we say "Feminism of the 99 percent." The mere presence of one woman, often a woman with privilege, or a woman who does not threaten the dominant structures perpetuating marginalisation and oppression, does not mean change is on the way. For that to happen, disturbances must occur, and continue.

Aliza Rahman is a member of the editorial team at The Daily Star.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own.

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