Female Leaders of Nations and the US Presidency with Farida Jalalzai

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Travis

Travis Williams (00:08.376)

things I remember from my elementary school classrooms was a giant poster that contained pictures of every former United States president. I spent a lot of time, arguably too much time, just looking at that poster and thinking about how these individuals were different in their appearance, how their hairstyles changed, their clothing was different, how some of them had really sweet beards while many did not. But for all the differences this group of individuals had, the one thing they all had in common, and still have in common today as I record this in October of 2024, is that they were all male. So I was curious why we here in the United States have never had a female president, how we compare with other nations across the global, and what some of the challenages are to females rising to that level of political power.

And thankfully, Virginia Tech’s Farida Jalalzia was kind enough to answer all this and more.

Farida is a professor in the Department of Political Science and the associate dean for global initiatives and engagement in Virginia Tech's College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. Her research focuses heavily on the representation and behavior of women and minorities in politics and the role of gender in the political arena. We chatted about how the United States stacks up compared to other countries across the world, what some of the unique challenges that females in the United States face when it comes to through that level of political leadership, and how big a factor is a society's collective perception of gender roles in this equation? We also chatted a little bit about the challenges the first female president or leader of a country often faces, and she explained to me where the term breaking the glass ceiling comes from. I'm Travis Williams, and this is Virginia Tech's Curious Conversations.

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Travis

And so I guess what I'm curious about right off the bat is where does the United States rank or measure from like a global perspective when it comes to female leadership?

Farida

If you're thinking about female leadership broadly, so let's say women in Parliament, the United States is middle of the pack. So they've improved over time in terms of the percentage of women in Congress. In fact, women in Congress are experiencing record levels highs close to 30 % in the House, for example, 25 % in the Senate. And when you look at the globe, then that puts the United States about midway, the middle point of all countries that are ranked. So it's not terrible, but one would hope that it would be better. And there are quite a few other countries that one would be surprised to know rank higher than the United States. And then...

I it just depends on the level of government that you're analyzing. So if I'm speaking off the top of my head, which I am right now, I want to say 12 of the 50 governors in office now are women. And that's, think, a record high as well. And the state legislature, about 30 some percentage of state legislatures around the country are comprised of women.

And so when we're looking at the questions that I engage, it is about what is seen as the top post, which of course is the presidency or the prime ministership in a country. And obviously we've come close to having a woman at the helm and the presidency, but not close enough at this point.

Travis

What's one of the countries that might surprise people?

Farida

Well, that ranks near the top. If we look at the parliamentary list, Rwanda is the top. And that can be explained in different ways. We could even have a whole conversation about that. But Rwanda is one of the countries that, of course, many of the countries on the list have mechanisms in place to propel women to positions of power. So things like quotas. And there are lots of different types of quotas. Rwanda, of course, we know as being a country that experienced genocide and there are population imbalances with women being a higher percentage of the population at a point, men having been, let's say, imprisoned or been killed in conflict. So I think that's usually a country that people are surprised to know has consistently ranked in the top for years now. And if you want to look at women presidents and prime ministers, There are about 26 in power right now as we speak. And if you want me to give you some examples of countries that are on the list, I mean, it's all over the map. We have Barbados, actually a couple of women in office in Barbados as president and prime minister. We have the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We have Honduras, we have Ethiopia, we have India, you know, and those I think might be fairly surprising and then maybe some not so surprising places like Iceland. And most recently, just the other day, the inauguration of the first female president of Mexico, Claudia Schoenbaum. So it is all over the map.

Travis

As you mentioned, we have not had a female president in United States. What are some unique challenges or maybe America specific challenges we have in this regard compared to other countries?

Farida

So I would say a lot of it is about the institutions in place. And what my work has done is shed light on some of the commonalities in terms of the institutions. And women disproportionately seem to gain a seat at the table in systems where there is both a president and a prime minister. And they are often relegated to the weaker of the two positions or they're in a parliamentary system and they're positioned in a strong role as prime minister. But we have to note that to get into the prime ministership, whereas to be in parliament at all, you would have to have won a popular election in your district, right? But to become the prime minister requires an appointment, right? And not a national popular vote. So the US presidency presents a lot of obstacles that women have to surmount, particularly when we think about the institutions, not only when it comes to the nomination, but then the general election. And the US really does stand apart from other countries in that complexity of electoral procedures that are related to presidents' ascension. So we could unpack different things.

We could talk about federalism and all of these different states that select their nominees differently. And it's difficult to navigate. We know that it also entails financial costs, and that's going to be something that limits the number of viable candidates. If we look at the fact that you do to get into the position, you have to rely on a popular vote. That has, if we look at the global picture,

There are very few women, honestly, who've held a presidency in a country where the president is the dominant player and has done so through a popular vote rather than maybe coming in as a vice president and then succeeding the president when an opening occurs, which is what happened, for example, in Peru. That's why there's a president of Peru right now who's in power or explains why she's in power. So you have that. And then when we've seen in different countries or regions like Latin America or Asia, when a woman is a president and they're not sharing power with others in terms of the system configuration, they have historically been women from political families, whether they're the daughter of a former leader or the wife of a leader, former leader. And the questions that come up, of course, from this is, can women just, can women not win a popular vote if they don't have these connections to power? And I think my work shed some light on that complexity and when it's something that is happening or is possible. There's usually a lot of caveats, unfortunately, even though I can definitely say to you today, women have significantly increased their presence as presidents and prime ministers worldwide, especially compared to when I first started doing this research where they were few and far between. They are significantly increasing their presence, though I say that and here's my caveat again because there's always caveats. Out of the 26 people that I mentioned before who are in power right now, well, 26 people out of the whole globe, all of the positions that are available on the world stage, that's nothing, right? That's nothing. And women usually as a percentage are far less than 10 % of the leaders in office. Also, if you looked at the power that the women on that list have, you're also going to see that they don't actually, many of them don't actually have a lot of power. And if I were to just give you a few examples, quite a few women on the list are actually, they're in Africa, but they hold a prime ministership. And in Africa, presidencies are typically the strongest position. These are positions available. And when you're located as a prime minister, you're going to be more vulnerable to perhaps not being able to retain power. In some of these countries, a president could just single-handedly dismiss a prime minister. The prime minister, I think then we can also explain is there in the first place because in some cases, the president can handpick their prime minister. So I think a takeaway. With that is we have to really drill down and assess the paths and the powers that are available in women's locations in that power structure.

Travis

I guess what I'm curious about too is what role do you think gender roles in a society have really played or do play in elevating women on a global scale? if a society, if a country has less rigid gender roles, does that make them more apt to have females in leadership?

Farida

Sometimes and sometimes not. I mean, just to be honest. So there are places where it makes total sense, right? It makes total sense why Iceland and Finland would top the charts with women's leadership at the executive level. I want to say four different instances of women leaders in each of those countries both having been presidents and some being prime ministers. Makes sense, right? Because when we think about what you were saying, gender roles, being more open to women's inclusion politically, that to me, it makes sense, but it doesn't always work like that if we were to take a similar country that has a similar institutional structure, political structure, similarly high levels of

gender, I guess we'd say support for gender equality. Sweden was so late to the game. Sweden was so late to the game when it came to having a woman in power and only a woman in power, very, very briefly. And there are other places that have more, I guess, support, show more support for women's empowerment that have never had a woman in, at the top position. The United States, if you ask people, you'll have a large percentage of the population saying that they support women's equal role. And we also know that in the United States, women do have relatively speaking, a lot of educational opportunities, even outearning men in terms of college degrees, for example. I'm not going to cover up all of the problems with women's professional opportunities in the United States. I mean, there's quite a few instances of hitting the glass ceiling and women, for example, still tend to make less than their male counterparts. So I'm not trying to cover up all of these things that point in a different direction in terms of women's empowerment in the US. But relatively speaking, you would think that women would have a greater chance of having a chance at the top spot, we'll say. But all of these institutional factors And I'm not saying that there aren't gendered scripts that we play out that limit women's chances here, but on paper would seem as though, yeah, again, this is why I was asking this question a long time ago. Why not a woman president? Whereas other places like where my family's from in Pakistan, there was a Benasir Bhutto in the face of all of these overt gendered limitations when we're thinking about education and opportunities.

Travis

Well, I some of your work has been related to looking at female leadership relative to the pandemic. How did the COVID-19, the global pandemic, how did that impact this topic, this situation? There was a lot of press, let's say, especially a few months into the pandemic or even that first year into the pandemic of women leaders being first of all, written about. has not always, that's just not always been the case, right? Where women who are in these positions of power, we don't necessarily always see them on the world stage. mean, there's exceptions. Angela Merkel was obviously someone who was in the press a lot. But all of a sudden with the pandemic, there was just this attention that the international press, including the United States, focused on the good job that women were doing as leaders.

And so they rode this wave for a while of positive press. And what it did is sort of mixed. And I'll talk about the upside first. Is that number one, it brought really, I think, good cases of women leaders and good responses to the pandemic into our conversation, into our just even knowledge base. I'm sure that there were quite a few people who when they would see the headlines would just even take notice that, there's a female president of Taiwan. They didn't realize that. Or Jacinda Ardern became very popular during that time, the former prime minister of New Zealand. So in that sense, it makes it perhaps possible that we think that having a woman leader is a good thing when...And many, think the default really is if you look at the people in power, if you look at that, it just still sends the message that executive office is, it's just, a male domain, right? And that sends, it does send messages of who should be in the room. And if you're not in that space, maybe you shouldn't, maybe you don't belong there.

So there's some positive aspects of it. And some of the case studies that I've done that focused on the performance of some of these women, I mean, it showed not that women are the only people that can make the decisions or lead in a way that created better outcomes, but some of the things that we associate with feminine leadership that again, a man could also employ may very well be something we should take a close look at and maybe even say this was a good way of leading.

Travis

So what are some of those characteristics?

Farida

So when I'm thinking about a feminine style of leadership, it connotes things like being just taking your time to figure out what a problem involves and what a response would be that could be more positive when you take the time to deliberate a decision versus just trying to act super quickly without really knowing that much about what's happening. Consulting, consulting people who have expertise in this area and being able to own missteps or mistakes when those were identified. And a lot of it is communicating. So what a lot of women leaders did that I think was very positive was communicate, communicate regularly, communicate as part of a team. And when they communicated, showed a sense of empathy and concern and provided maybe this the sense of a larger context and how though we're experiencing an unprecedented crisis, people could take comfort in knowing that this was part of a larger, you're part of a larger country, you're part of a larger nation and that we're in this together versus evoking maybe divisive comments and going out of your way to just demonstrate power.

So again, it's not something that's only limited to women, but some of the traits that I think when we look at who seems to have been successful, those were some of the traits that seemed to work well. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me.

Travis

Just from looking at female leadership globally and the fact that maybe we will in fact have a female president in the United States one day, what are some challenges that the first female president of a country encounters.

Farida

I would say it's about what it means, what it means symbolically to have a woman. There's a lot of attention that's given to the first because it's the breaking of a, especially in the United States, when the barrier has been in place for so long. There's a reason for excitement. There's a reason for excitement when we think, at last, this is something that's happened when we didn't think it's possible. And those who, let's say are women, women of color with Kamala Harris, especially could view this as an opportunity to bask in the glory of the event and maybe be galvanized in so far as to say, all right, finally, right now. Now we can't say that women can't be elected because look, she was elected. So there's that and the symbolic effect can be pretty powerful. At the same time, we have to know that there's a lot of pressure in that, right? So there's a lot of pressure in it because...I guess number one, not everybody agrees that this particular person is the symbol that they wish. Right? Not everybody's going to say Kamala Harris, the first president of the United States. I'm so happy that she's the first. And that's obviously it's tied in with politics. It's, it's, it's going to play on people's perceptions of how the United States, the direction that the United States needs to go more, more specifically. And I may read, I may be someone who would look at that example and be extremely happy and view this as a turning point and a milestone, but there are going to be other people that reject her as a symbol. And if we, if we also then even look at those who accept her as a symbol, being the first woman president and first woman of color president, There's some limitations in so far as you're going to then be looked at in a way where everything that you do on behalf of the group that you represent is going to be scrutinized too. And so how, how, how did you improve the lives of women? How did you improve the lives of marginalized groups in a, in a context where let's just be honest. It's extremely fraught. Yeah, I can go on. There's a lot that I could say about this.

Travis

Well, it sounds like that is a very high pressure situation to say the least. And perhaps in an office where you're already going to be scrutinized for everything that you do anyway. I am curious, I guess maybe to end this podcast. Do you know where the concept glass ceiling came from?

Farida

So it's from the business field and it's this It's basically this metaphor for women in professional occupations who could see above them all of the different inequities and they're trying to be on this trajectory to get promoted and recognizing that there's this seemingly unpenetrable barrier that's holding them back that has everything to do with gender discrimination the ideas to be able to ideally make that, just break that barrier. But we have these other metaphors that have come up with, just even in my first book where it was, all right, well, you have one example in, let's say, the realm of presidencies and prime ministers of a woman that led. But is that truly, what does that really mean? I established this sense of Well, sometimes if you have one come through, mean, maybe it's it's cracked enough. It's cracked open wide enough for someone, a woman to get in, but maybe hasn't shattered. And when I think about a shattered ceiling, obviously, it really, it really is supposed to convey that gender is no longer an obstacle to your your executive pursuits. But even in those cases, So some of my recent field work, say for example, in New Zealand and in Finland, was based on a Fulbright grant that I had in New Zealand and Poland and Iceland, was interested in knowing what does it mean to have several different cases of women leaders that have come to power? And so if you look at it one way, those are places the repeat cases over and over again, where it seems to indicate that the glass ceiling has shattered. But does that necessarily mean that women experience no obstacles, even if we just limit it politically? And obviously, the answer is no, right? The answer is no. They still have to deal with a lot of scrutiny, gendered scrutiny. If you ask, am I hopeful? Obviously. But I also see that it was the prime minister of New Zealand, just into Ardern, that faced a lot of negativity in so far as opponents being more than willing to engage in misogyny. And we do know that women in positions of power face a lot of political violence, meaning they face, some of them do get murdered, right? But...it's the threats, it's the constant barrage of threats that they'll receive, death threats. And those are things that men face too, but the types of violence that women encounter are different and are much more likely to, I mean, they're more, they're really, essential aim is to make women not wanna be in positions of power politically. And the types of threats are more sexualized. And so when I think about going to New Zealand and going to Finland and wanting to be there to see, what does this seemingly shattered glass ceiling hold? I mean, I was a little bit disappointed, but I understood that these are the limits that we face.

Travis

It sounds like maybe perhaps the metaphor still kind of works because if you break...something that's glass even if it shattered, it still is kind of rough if you have to keep going through it.

Farida

That's true. Over and over and over again. So you're right.

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Travis

And thanks to Farida for talking to us about females in the political arena in the United States as well as female leadership across the globe. If you or someone you know would make for a great curious conversation, email me at traviskw at vt.edu. I'm Travis Williams and this has been Virginia Tech's Curious Conversations.