Women leaders are ultimate heirs to the future

If you were a woman and lived in France in 1944, you wouldn't have been allowed to vote. France, the land of Voltaire and liberté, egalité, fraternité, was among the last European countries to give women the right to vote.

Britain wasn't any better: British women got the full vote only in 1928. South America was worse. Women in Chile were not allowed to vote till 1961.

How things have changed. In 2016, 49 countries have elected women heads of government (not counting women monarchs). Since British women won the right to vote 88 years ago, the country has elected two women as prime minister - Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and Theresa May in 2016 (though May was elected through an internal Conservative party poll).

At first glance, South Asia seems a feminist haven: every major country in the region has had an elected woman head of government: Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto and, in Bangladesh, both Sheikh Hasina and Begum Khaleda Zia. Sri Lanka in fact holds the distinction of being the first country in the world to elect a woman leader - Sirimavo Bandarnaike - in 1960.

The apparent progressiveness is of course illusory. All four South Asian women leaders have been dynasts, inheriting the position from their father or husband, albeit through democratic elections. The winner here is feudalism not feminism.

And it is the same feudalism we have seen at work in recent days after the death of J Jayalalithaa. She won the mantle from mentor MGR after a bitter tussle with his wife Janaki. In that sense at least, she earned her stripes. Her successor Sasikala, however, by stepping into her shoes, is set to propagate the cult of feudal politics.

Most other state-level women leaders in India owe their positions to family or a male mentor. The BSP's Mayawati and the PDP's Mehbooba Mufti are stereotypical examples though Mayawati to her credit has significantly built on the political base she inherited from her mentor Kanshi Ram.

Interestingly, the United States remains one of the few major western countries to have never elected a woman head of government though Hillary Clinton came close last month.

America has a curious puritanical streak that puts it at odds with countries in Europe and South America where women leaders are now common. The oddly regressive impulse in the US ensured that blacks (men and women) were not allowed to vote in some southern states till as late as 1965 - two years after the death of the moderniser-president John F Kennedy.

President-elect Donald Trump was expected - especially after his outrageous comments on women throughout the presidential campaign - to stuff his cabinet and administration with alpha males. And with the choice of three retired Generals (Michael Flynn, James "Mad Dog" Mattis and John Kelly) he's done just that. But he's also revealed a softer side: nearly 30 per cent of his cabinet and key administration picks so far (six out of 22) are women: Nikki Haley, Betsy deVos, Elaine Chao, Kathleen McFarland, Seema Verma and Linda McMahon.

Interestingly, two of the six women are of Indian origin: Nikki Haley (nominated as US ambassador to the UN) and Seema Verma (picked as head of Medicare and Medicaid). Elain Chao, nominated as transportation secretary, a senior cabinet position, is also of Asian descent.

True to his TV reality-style persona, however, Trump has nominated Linda McMahon to head the Small Business Administration (SBA) department. McMahon is co-founder and ex-CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) which, among other things, features bouts between women dressed in lingerie.

Glass ceiling

So where do women leaders go from here? The political glass ceiling may not have been shattered, but it certainly has developed cracks.

In India, while feudal dynasts like Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje have an easier path to the top, others like West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee have risen on merit - if that is the right word for her rise.

There is in fact a sobering lesson in Mamata's ascendancy. With no mentor or family previously engaged in politics, Mamata has used precisely those tactics to win elections that she decried in male rivals: appeasing minorities, unleashing a cult of violence on political opponents, building a thuggish cadre, and co-opting corrupt legislators.

To get to the top, Mamata has behaved just like the CPM which ruled (and ruined) West Bengal for over three decades.

Jayalalithaa too was a ruthless leader during her four terms as chief minister beginning in 1991 when she was still only 43. In 2004, when she was arguably at the peak of her career, I travelled to Chennai to interview her. We met at the chief minister's office.

I had been warned by my Chennai bureau chief that she preferred a namaste as a greeting. Out of force of habit, however, I proferred by hand as we met and she shook it warmly.

After our hour-long interview was over, as we drove back to the hotel, my Chennai bureau chief said conspiratorially "She rarely shakes journalists' hands, especially after her recent interview with a television anchor."

With us though, Jayalalithaa was both pleasant and professional, answering questions across a range of issues without the aid of notes.

In a patriarchal society like India's, women leaders are increasingly beating men at their own game: politicking.

While Sonia Gandhi, Vasundhara Raje, Mayawati and Mehbooba have overcome patriarchy through family or feudalism, others like Jayalalithaa, Mamata and former Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel have risen on the back of performance and, in the case of Anandiben, been sidelined when performance lags.  

As education, demographics and technology level the playing field, women leaders will increasingly be judged on merit, not gender. They represent the future.