The women ruling the world

Women globally lag behind in the leadership, especially in political offices and international organisations.

Despite this unfortunate scenario, however, they are slowly overcoming the predicament with some emerging among the most powerful persons in the world.

Three of them decided to leave nothing to chance until they achieve what they trained their eyes on.

Angela Merkel, the outgoing German Chancellor took office on November 22, 2005, as chancellor, becoming the first woman, the first East German to hold the office. She became a chancellor at the age of 51, becoming the youngest person to hold the post to date.

She topped Forbes’ annual ranking of the world's most powerful women for 2019, and has remained the most powerful woman in the world, leading Europe's largest economy after she saw Germany through a financial crisis.

Presiding over the planet's fourth-largest economy, the former research scientist is widely considered to be the leading light of the post-World War II.

Trustworthiness and centrist policies endeared her to many German voters, seeing her elected for four consecutive terms.

She was born Angela Dorothea Kasner in 1954 in Hamburg, West Germany before moving to Templin in 1957 where she attended high school in 1973. She then went to Leipzigto to study Physics at the Karl Marx University now, the University of Leipzig, where she obtained a doctorate in Quantum Chemistry in 1986 and worked as a research scientist until 1989.

The German Chancellor joined politics in the wake of the revolutions of 1989 and served as deputy spokesperson for Lothar de Maiziere who was the first democratically elected East German government head in the year 1990.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl

After the German reunification in 1990, she was elected to the federal parliament for the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

Ms Merkel, who is a mentee of Chancellor Helmut Kohl was appointed the Federal Minister for Women and Youth in Kohl's government in 1991.

In 1994, she became the Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety.

She rose to her highest political office in 2005 when she was elected the first female Chancellor of Germany and has been in office since then.

Ms Merkel is among several other women leaders who have won accolades for proper management of the Covid-19 pandemic in their respective countries, leading to fewer deaths and infections.

In her first address to the nation on coronavirus, Ms Merkel appealed to citizens’ reason and discipline to slow the spread of the virus.

Kamala Devi Harris made history in November last year by becoming the first woman and woman of colour to be elected Vice President of the United States of America.

Although she broke the glass ceiling by becoming the first US woman vice-president, the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, is no stranger to making history.

She was the first black woman to become Attorney General of California and the second to become a US senator. She was also the first Indian American to serve as a US Senator as well as the second African American woman.

Hillary Clinton

Ms Harris was the fourth woman to appear on a major political party’s presidential ticket, after Democratic vice-presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, Republican Sarah Palin in 2008, and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016. She is the first to win.

Speaking following the win she said: “While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last. Because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities and now knows they can do so too.”

The Vice-President is expected to serve as a governing partner to President Biden to help him achieve his top priorities.

The two senior global political leaders are just among the only few women leaders occupying high political offices in their respective countries.

According to UN Women, women are underrepresented at all levels of decision-making worldwide, and achieving gender parity in political life is far off.

The UN agency says only 22 countries have women serving as Heads of State or government with 119 countries having never had a woman leader.

The UN Women in their current projections show that gender equality in the highest positions of power will not be reached in another 130 years. It also shows women’s rights and leadership are under serious threat.

The projections also indicate that only three countries globally have 50 per cent or more women in parliament, and the same amount have no women in parliament at all.

They also indicate women under 30 years make up less than one per cent of parliamentarians globally. The agency also notes only 21 per cent of government ministers were women, with only 14 countries having achieved 50 per cent or more women in cabinets.

Gender parity

Only four countries have 50 per cent or more women in parliament in single or lower houses: Rwanda with 61 per cent, Cuba with 53 per cent, Bolivia with 53 per cent, and the United Arab Emirates with 50 per cent.

Globally, there are 27 States in which women account for less than 10 per cent of parliamentarians in single or lower houses, including four single/lower chambers with no women at all.

And with an annual increase of just 0.52 percentage points, UN Women notes that gender parity in ministerial positions will not be achieved before 2077.

Last month, Dr Okonjo-Iweala made history after she became the first woman and the first African to be chosen as Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

The position that has an important role in advancing global trade and cooperation essentially made her one of the most powerful women in the world.

As the head of the powerful global body, Dr Okonjo-Iweala will oversee the implementation of a set of multilaterally agreed rules governing policies affecting both trade in goods and services, and the protection of intellectual property.

She will also oversee the administering of the rules, settling trade disputes, and pursuing negotiations to reduce trade barriers, and to strengthen and extend the multilateral rules.

Dr Okonjo-Iweala’s experience gives her strong credentials. After studying economics at Harvard and MIT, she spent 25 years at the World Bank.

She was a development economist, working on programme and policy reforms, and eventually became its managing director.

She also served as Nigeria’s finance minister twice in 2003-2006 and 2011-2015 and was the first woman to assume the role.

Poor countries

She has held many other leadership roles. From 2016 to 2020 she chaired Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; a public-private global health partnership that works to improve access to vaccines for children in poor countries.

The new WTO Director-General also sits on the boards of Standard Chartered PLC and Twitter. Until last year, she chaired the board of African Risk Capacity, an agency that helps African governments to better prepare and respond to extreme weather events and natural disasters.

She is renowned as the first female and African candidate to contest for the presidency of the World Bank Group in 2012, backed by Africa and major developing countries in the first truly contestable race for the world's highest development finance post.

According to the United Nations, Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), women are under-represented at senior levels within international organisations that shape much of the global dialogue on education.

In the Global Education Monitoring Report, Unesco indicates that Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), as of October 2017 had 16 out of 21 directors and seven out of eight heads of agencies and special entities were men.

With respect to bilateral aid agencies, the report indicates that representation of women in three of the top ten donors was mixed as of 2015.

A 2020 analysis of more than 1,100 organisations across the world by Mercer, found a leaky pipeline for women in leadership with only 23 per cent being part of the executive, senior managers (29 per cent), managers (37 per cent) and professionals 42 per cent.

Female leader

Trade Experettes, a group of seasoned experts and young professionals with expertise in trade policy, economics, trade law and regulation, recently indicated that out of 30 major international organisations, more than half have never had a female leader, and of those that have, the majority of the appointees were women from Europe and North America.

In total, the group noted there have been only 33 women in top leadership posts among 291 leaders in the 30 major international organisations covering most UN organisations and specialised agencies.

In addition, 15 organisations constituting half of those sampled, have never had a female leader. Among the 33 women leaders identified, only five were appointed before the year 2000.

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