Women in Power through the Ages

Coffee with Costa - Pavement Philosopher

Women in Power through the Ages

Introduction

My essay is about women in power through the ages. I start with a brief historical tour of famous female warriors and rulers and then turn my focus on female leaders past and present in the modern era. What did they do in office? How successful were they? I will pay particular attention to the woman currently on everyone’s lips, Sarah Palin, the controversial governor of Alaska and pose the question whether she has what it takes to be the Vice-President of the USA let alone the President.

Female Warriors

In ancient accounts there are numerous examples of women in Egypt, Israel, Asia Minor, India, Persia, Arabia and China riding into battle at the side of their men. Often they forced their reluctant or cowardly men at sword point to return to battle or they continued fighting after their men were slain in battle. The legendary Amazons didn’t need men. They fought alone. They were formidable female mounted warriors from the Black Sea area. These fearless warriors of the open plain rode to Athens determined to avenge the loss of their Princess, Antiope, daughter of their Queen, Hippolyta. They camped outside the city walls of Athens and waged war on the Greeks, on a punitive expedition to rescue Antiope, who was abducted by King Theseus. They wore hoods of bearskin and black leopard. They carried ivory trimmed shields and had double-bladed axes strapped to their backs. They bore names like Battle Fury, Little Whirlwind and Powerful Mare. The Amazons proved that they could ride a horse and swing an axe as well as any man. Many male warriors lost their heads, the lucky ones to their savage charms and the temptations of their thighs, the less fortunate ones to their swords.

In ancient Britannia, Boudicca and her daughter rode in her chariot leading the British tribes in an uprising against the occupying legions of the mighty Roman Empire. Centuries later in the 15th century, who can forget how a gifted 19 year old peasant girl, Joan of Arc, led the French army to a series of significant victories against the English. Unfortunately she was captured and after a sham trial for heresy, burnt at the stake by the English for political reasons.

Powerful Female Monarchs in History

Although not great in numbers compared to men, throughout history several notable women have successfully pursued power and political office often punching above their weight. Powerful female monarchs have dealt with the men in their lives with a combination of adoration, guile, cunning, manipulation, praise, persuasion, promiscuity and seduction.

Cleopatra, the last Queen and Pharaoh in the 300 year reign of the Hellenistic Ptolemaic dynasty, was a survivor who clearly understood the phrase that politics is the art of the possible, practised by the devious. She tried to cling onto power by seducing two of the most powerful men in the Roman Empire. After a sordid succession of incestuous liaisons with her layabout brothers, which produced no offspring, her taste in men improved considerably and turned somewhat conventional. First she rolled out of a carpet all lithesome and lascivious with lustful intent at the feet of a captivated Julius Caesar. She promptly had a son with him and thereby secured the throne from her main rival, her brother. After Julius was hacked to pieces in the Senate by his colleagues, she turned her attentions on Mark Anthony, the stud of the ancient world, and had a pair of twins and a son with him. In the end sex was not enough. She succumbed to self-administered cobra venom. Cleopatra had a way with snakes. The cobra was a symbol of royalty and death by its poison was thought to be a more dignified way of dying than strangulation, beheading or drowning in a grain sack tossed into the Nile.

Elizabeth I was optimistically called “the Virgin Queen” by her adoring subjects. “Good Queen Bess” was the last monarch of the Tudor dynasty and reigned for forty four years. She was the daughter of the homicidal Henry VIII and the scheming Anne Boleyn, who lost her head when she fell out of Henry’s favour. Parents make an indelible impression upon their children. Children also learn a lot by imitating their parents. Elizabeth in turn made sure that her main rival to the throne, the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots, lost her head. Some accounts will have us believe that Elizabeth had a huge crush on Sir Walter Raleigh and had an affair with the famous writer, poet, courtier, sailor and explorer, to reward him for his minor role in saving her realm from the Spanish Armada. Sir Francis Drake and the English sailors aided by fortuitous weather were the real heroes. Despite Elizabeth’s popularity she remained single and childless.

Catherine the Great of Russia was German born and did not have a single drop of Russian blood in her. She had a brilliant and illustrious reign spanning thirty four years and spent her considerable wealth, time and talent trying to modernise a backward and superstitious Russia. Catherine had many young lovers drawn from the ranks of the Russian aristocracy but the enduring love of her life was the flamboyant, excessive and charismatic Count Grigori Potemkin. Potemkin was a statesman and general and Catherine made him a Prince of the Russian Empire. He became the most important and powerful man in Imperial Russia and the favourite of the Tsarina. Catherine entrusted her life-long lover, partner and confidante with most matters of state and he in turn annexed territories and expanded her empire. Potemkin was the real or de facto master and ruler of Russia, handling most military, organisational and scientific matters. Catherine did nothing without consulting him. She rewarded him for his service and devotion with lavish gifts, money, palaces and huge country estates the size of small countries.

Catherine had a vast intellect and was undoubtedly a “philosopher on the throne” or a “philosopher queen.” She corresponded with Voltaire and Diderot, the leading French intellectuals of the day and eventually bought their entire library collections. She improved public health and education. Catherine founded the first College of Medicine in Russia and built hospitals in each provincial capital. She built factories, improved agricultural practises and boosted exports. Catherine needed to modernise the navy and rebuild the Imperial fleet so she enlisted the help of German and English consultants. Sound familiar? She wrote essays, children’s stories and composed operas. All she asked for in return was to be flattered, admired and occasionally loved. Among female rulers past and present she seems to have broken all records in the number and frequency of her love affairs, yet she was by nature a serial monogamist. Only the wild, untamed and promiscuous Potemkin matched her huge appetites, bedding an endless supply of Russian beauties including his young nieces. In many ways he was Catherine’s alter ego.

Modern Female Politicians

Queen Victoria, as a constitutional monarch did not effectively rule but she wielded considerable influence behind the scenes and presided over the largest empire in the world. It is evident then that not only have women ruled empires, but they have also managed affairs of state and plotted, poisoned and pillaged like the best or rather the worst of men.

And sometimes the best man for a job is undoubtedly a woman. Margaret Thatcher was uncompromising in both domestic and global politics. The daughter of a grocer, she rose to the top of a very greasy and treacherous pole. Before entering politics she studied chemistry and even helped develop ways to preserve ice-cream, which of course is very useful in any politician’s lunchbox when debates in the House of Commons get heated. Thatcher became the first female leader of the Conservative Party and the nations first female Prime Minister. What did she do? She reigned unchallenged in British politics for several terms of office from 1979 until 1990 but not before employing the services of a voice coach. Her strident high pitched voice was moderated and modulated to a deeper more masculine tone and a slower delivery pace so that the male cross-dressers in her cabinet could take her seriously. Thatcher pushed privatisation, took on the power of the unions, closed down mines and waged war against the uppity Argentineans in the Malvinas. She was a close ally of President Ronald Reagan and a staunch critic of the former Soviet Union. Did she have what it takes? Unquestionably. The men in her life were underwhelming or disappointing in comparison. Her bemused husband Dennis watched from the sidelines while son Mark used mum’s name and connections to conduct shady arms deals all over the world.

Some women are pushed into leadership positions by family connection, death of a male relative or by accident of birth. Indira Gandhi was India’s first female Prime Minister. Benazir Bhutto was the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state. She served twice as Prime Minister of Pakistan. These women paid the ultimate price for their political ambitions. They were both assassinated by male extremists.

The Czech born Madeleine Albright served as the US permanent representative to the UN in 1993, which was also my last year at the UN. She was dour, combative and hawkish. She ruffled many feathers and was not very tactful or popular. She replaced the well-liked and respected, Ambassador Thomas Pickering who was the USA’s point man at the UN during the first Iraq war. During her tenure at the UN she had a tense and sometimes confrontational relationship with UN Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, which prompted his spokesperson, a woman, to say of her, “she is no shrinking violet.” That is about as critical as you get in diplomatic language. Albright failed to initiate or recognise the need for urgent multilateral action against the genocide in Rwanda and also showed total disregard and complete insensitivity to the humanitarian crisis in Iraq after the first Gulf War. The combination of war, bombing and sanctions had reduced Iraq to a primitive almost pre-historic state, which led to the deaths of half a million children. In a 1996 interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes, she said that the deaths of the children, “was a hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.” She later regretted uttering these words, admitting that she had made a terrible blunder.

In 1997 Albright was appointed as the USA’s first female Secretary of State in the Clinton administration. She is now a Professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service where she teaches diplomacy and US foreign policy. It seems Albright is a better and happier person as an academic than as a politician. She can finally drop her guard and her defensiveness and focus on lecturing, research and writing papers. Proof of this is that she was voted best lecturer four years running by her students. She is also proud of her physical fitness regime and claims that she can leg press 400 pounds, which is probably why Bill Clinton appointed her in the first place, to intimidate Arab world leaders. I would also bet good money on her beating both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin at arm wrestling.

Another much friendlier and somewhat more beguiling female leading lady was the Hungarian born, Ilona Staller, who after gaining notoriety as a C grade porn star, model and singer went on to become an Italian parliamentarian. “La Cicciolina” or “The Little Fleshy One” was against nuclear energy and world hunger. She actively campaigned for human rights and absolute sexual freedom. She even campaigned for the right to sex in prison. What she may not have considered is that sex does occur in prisons but it’s usually not between two consenting adults of the opposite sex. Maybe we should allow prison families and marriages. Freely available and consensual safe sex in prison might lower the extreme levels of aggression in male inmates. A cheaper and easier solution may be to put the rave drug Ecstacy in their water, so that instead of stabbing each other they lick each other.

What else did Cicciolina do? She famously bared her breasts on Italian television and offered to sleep with the late Saddam Hussein in order to bring a speedy end to the First Gulf War. Saddam didn’t really need to consort with the likes of Staller and maintained a dignified diplomatic silence which is quite an unusual achievement for an Arab psychopath sporting his particular brand of violent machismo. Remember how Saddam even took out his son-in-law. Similar to King Farouk, the decadent playboy monarch of Egypt in the 1950’s, who treated his country’s hospitals as private harems, Saddam had his pick of state hospitals stocked with indentured nurses.

Back at home, Winnie Mandela ran the ANC Women’s League, made match boxes fashionable and once ran a soccer club. The juvenile delinquents in the ANC Youth League now favour Dunhill lighters and Hennessy over petrol. And what will the belligerent Manto Tshabalala Msimang do now? Thankfully the grumpy grandmother can cause no more carnage to the country’s decimated public health system. She is no longer the minister of health in South Africa. She has been replaced by Barbara Hogan who looks as if she is up to the demanding and thankless job. President Kgalema Motlanthe wasted no time to redeploy her to the office of the President, where she is now known as minister in the Presidency. This is the same as saying she is now a minister without portfolio. Effectively she is being put out to pasture. The wise Motlanthe, who by the day is looking more and more like a credible elder statesman, probably knows that this is where the volatile Manto can cause the least mayhem and damage. This is where he can keep a close eye on her.

I’d entrust Manto with an important but meaningless job I once had in the Union Buildings as a junior Foreign Service officer on the American desk. I’d let her pass the time in her big corner office, complete with floral print lounge and fire-place, cutting out newspaper clippings from the Pretoria News. Then I’d have her place the newspaper cuttings in folders marked “top secret” and lock them up in metal filing cabinets in alphabetical order for future reference. Manto in any event keeps her own scrapbook filled with garlic and beetroot recipes, her Cuban postcard collection and domestic airline tickets, so this new job should be easy and familiar. Any future hospital visits as a patient should be confined to public hospitals and not private ones where she can terrorise the nurses. I’d keep her away from the vegetables in the Union Buildings kitchens and I’d definitely hide all the vegetable peelers and lock up all the liquor cabinets.

Women Presently in Power

A quick survey of women parliamentarians in the world today reveals some surprising results. The percentage of female parliamentarians in a traditional male dominated Muslim country like Afghanistan is 27, 7%. In Iraq it is 25, 5% and 32% in South Africa. The figure is probably higher in some Western countries.

There are currently ten female world leaders serving either as prime ministers or presidents of their countries. They include India, Ireland, New Zealand, Finland, Philippines, Mozambique, Germany, Liberia, Chile and Haiti. The percentage may be small considering that the UN has 192 recognised member states but it does tell us that women are playing an increasingly prominent role in the political affairs of the world. When it comes to cabinet ministers the picture looks slightly better. Finland has 12 out of 20 cabinet posts filled by women. In France Sarkozy appointed 7 female ministers out of a total of 15. Spain this year had a young female defence minister who was seven months pregnant. There are 9 female government ministers in Spain out of a total of 17. South Africa under Mbeki had 12 female cabinet ministers and 16 males.

A modern day Amazon is Tzipi Livni, the acting Prime Minister of Israel and former Foreign Minister. What will she do if she manages to form a coalition government and comes to power? What will she do for Israel and the Middle East? The bigger question is what will she do about the nuclear ambitions of Iran and the fiery anti-Israeli rhetoric of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Livni served as a lieutenant in the Israeli Defence Force and was also a former Mossad agent based in Paris. She is a vegetarian married to an accountant. That immediately sounds ominous. Political commentators say that she models herself on Golda Meir, Israel’s first female Prime Minister who like Livni also did a stint as foreign minister. Incidentally, Meir was called the “the iron lady” of Israeli politics long before Margaret Thatcher could lay claim to that title and successfully steered Israel through the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Will Livni do it? Will she order aerial bombing and missile strikes on Iran’s nuclear installations? Certain highly placed sources tell me it’s very possible if diplomacy fails.

Israel believes that Iran will have enough enriched or refined uranium for a nuclear bomb by the end of 2009. Israel is less concerned about the Iranians attacking Israel with nuclear weapons but is very worried about two other possible scenarios: the first concern centres around nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. If Iran gets the bomb, other Arab states will also want the bomb. Secondly there are valid fears that nuclear weapons will find their way into the hands of hostile organisations such as Hezbollah, Al Qaeda or some other rogue terrorist group hell bent on wiping the state of Israel off the face of the earth. Israel’s very survival depends on neither of these two scenarios ever transpiring.

Beauty and brains has always been a lethal combination. When it comes to impeccable grooming, hair-styling, dress sense and Euro-centric tastes in beauty there are few to match the four female cabinet ministers in Italy, all of them hand picked by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. One of the cabinet ministers is a former topless model in charge of the gender equality portfolio. Two other female ministers run education and the environment. They wear stylish immaculately tailored trouser suits, which seems to be the de rigeur uniform for female politicians.

Condoleeza Rice is an accomplished pianist and a former professor of political science. She served in the Bush senior administration as National Security Advisor and resident Soviet expert. She’s had an oil tanker named after her in gratitude for the work she did for Chevron in Kazakhstan. She currently serves in the Bush junior administration as Secretary of State. Dora Bakoyannis serves as the Foreign Minister of Greece. Condoleeza has admitted that she is happiest writing and doing academic research. Bakoyannis on the other hand is a political blue blood and far more ambitious. She wants to follow in her fathers, Constantine Mitsotakis’ footsteps, and become the first female prime minister of Greece. She was the first female mayor of Athens and is Greece’s first female foreign minister. Both Condoleeza Rice and Dora favour the ubiquitous trouser suits of their Italian counter-parts. They are tall, attractive, charismatic, well-educated, super- intelligent and determined women with a good grasp of the intricacies of foreign policy and international diplomacy. This invariably means that they have to cross their legs carefully and smile a lot in front of the cameras at press briefings and utter meaningless stock phrases like, “progress was made”, or “the talks were promising”, “the consultations were fruitful” and “bilateral efforts and dialogue will continue”, “All options will be explored.” They both work for political and intellectual lightweights, George Bush and Constantine Karamanlis respectively, who come from established family political dynasties.

Hillary Clinton vs Sarah Palin

Another modern day Amazon who like Tzipi Livni is familiar with guns and rifles is US Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. I can see her hitching a ride in Tzipi Livni’s helicopter, riding into battle wearing fashionable combat fatigues. We examine the credentials of the wolf hunter of Alaska and find that she once won a Miss Congeniality award and came 3rd in The Miss Alaska Pageant. She also earned the nickname “Sarah Barracuda” at school for her robust basketball playing. Palin has a degree in journalism. She has built up years of peace-keeping experience as a self-confessed hockey mom.

She’s conservative to the core so you might not agree with her environmental record or her particular brand of redneck politics but the gun friendly Governor of Alaska is a working mom and an attractive mother of five with a proven breeding record. She supports capital punishment, is anti-abortion or pro-life and is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association. Palin thinks it’s OK to shoot wolves from helicopters and to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She shows her softer maternal side, happily going on the campaign trail carrying her newborn baby on her hip. She’s bonding. A more cynical assessment would hold that she’s using the baby as a convenient prop. Nonetheless it’s an alluring image. Is her beauty relevant? Is beauty in politics an asset or a liability? Good looks and daddy’s money certainly helped JFK against an evasive and uncomfortable looking Richard Nixon. Surely it’s Palin’s intellect and leadership qualities that matter? More importantly does she have what it takes to a lead a floundering declining superpower that is financially and morally bankrupt? Could she be any worse than George Bush? It’s hard to imagine anyone being more inept in high office. She certainly seems to have a firm grasp of the economic realities that matter in her state, namely building bridges to nowhere in particular and the role of the oil and gas industries in generating employment in her state regardless of the great environmental cost.
Senator Hillary Clinton clearly has a formidable intellect far superior to anything Sarah Palin can offer and a better environmental record but she lacks humility, warmth and charisma. She is forever the disdainful prefect. Besides, I don’t think intellectuals make good presidents. Mbeki and Mugabe are proof of that. More troubling with Hillary is that you get the distinct impression that the high political office she craves is her divine or preordained right. Barack Obama sensibly shied away at appointing her as his running mate. Her presence and personality deemed too strong, dominant and disruptive for him to endure. Just ask Bill.

Unfortunately in their quest to succeed, powerful women like Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton had to almost de-sex themselves and chop their hair short. If Amazonian legend is to be believed, at least they did not need to go as far as cutting off their arrow-facing breast but they did in a way have to symbolically strap down and hide their breasts and suppress their femininity. In contrast Sarah Palin has decided that it’s OK to be pretty and powerful. She has unfairly been called the “pitbull in lipstick” yet more troubling is that she has been accused of serious ethical breaches and abuse of her gubernatorial powers in running her state. Regardless, both men and women continue to find her fascinating. Palin reassuringly refuses to hide her femininity and motherhood and incorporates both into her hunting pursuits and her position of power.

Female politicians like Maggie Thatcher, Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton have been very successful at emulating the more masculine attributes and values required to succeed in high office like being hard, uncompromising and driven but this has come at the cost of the softer, more nurturing and collaborative feminine traits and virtues. It seems that feminist writer Germaine Greer was right when she said that successful women have been forced to become the men they wanted to marry. But why be a second rate man when you can be a first class woman?

Palin, the vivacious brunette is refreshingly different on this score. She may come across as cute, tossing her hair and flirting unashamedly with the crowd, but her cultivated cuteness will only get her so far and I think she is smart enough to know it. A nagging worry is that there is still a bit of the giggling school girl in her, thrust onto a bigger stage beyond her wildest imaginings. She looks shaky at times and her voice sometimes betrays a slight tremor. The pitch of her voice gets higher as she gets excited and nervous yet this reminds us that she’s still everyman’s girl next door, who you’d have no hesitation inviting to the prom.

Taking looks, brains, personal beliefs and party ideology out of the political equation, and given a choice between the haughty Hillary Clinton and the energetic Sarah Palin, I would definitely choose the latter. I don’t agree with Sarah Palin’s conservative brand of politics but I like her nonetheless. What Nigella is to food Palin is to politics. Male chefs with Michelin star pedigrees disregard Nigella’s credentials and senior patrician Senators don’t take Palin too seriously. Palin however has that good old-fashioned, folksy, homespun apple-pie charm and warmth found in so many provincial women.

During the recent vice-presidential debate between her and Senator Joe Biden, many female admirers who were interviewed after the event, were more interested in her brand of rimless spectacles and her great smile. Palin held her own, stuck rigidly to her briefing notes and well-rehearsed sound bites but she may have lacked substance on the critical issues at times. It didn’t matter in the end. She’s serving her political apprenticeship in the big league and unlike Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Joe Biden; she has time on her hands. Some say that she has the look of an official’s secretary. When it comes to physical attributes I must admit I was more taken by her well-turned stockinged calves than her glasses but then again I have been unduly influenced by a good doctor I know, my favourite female; a physician who has a fetish for shapely calves.

Sarah Palin has been accused of lacking substance and experience. Well guess what? So did Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Dan Quayle and George Bush junior but that didn’t stop them from holding office. Ronald Reagan was hailed as the most successful and well-loved US President in recent times and was credited with the fall of Communism and the end of the Cold War. Did he have substance and experience as the former Governor of California? He certainly didn’t have a towering intellect. Author and Washington Post columnist, Haynes Johnson cruelly referred to Reagan as “sleepwalking through history” because of his reputation for not being fully in charge or appraised of events. He was a former B-grade actor who remembered, delivered and repeated his carefully crafted lines very well. This earned him the title “the great communicator.” On the American desk at the Union Buildings during 1989-1990 we employed the services of one of his top aides to act as our political lobbyist in Washington. He had also served as an advisor to the paranoid but very clever Richard Nixon. He told us that Reagan was very easy and co-operative to work with, when he was awake, of course. He would ask his top aides, advisors and speech writers to tell him exactly how they wanted him to deliver his script.

Conclusion

Catherine the Great gets my vote for the most accomplished and successful female ruler of all time, but then she was an absolute monarch and had 34 years to achieve her vision for Russia.

To her infinite regret, Hillary Clinton is no longer in the running but she is still in her own mind America’s self-appointed head girl. She knows it all, giving her an air of superiority and smugness whereas Sarah Palin knows she doesn’t know it all, but she is willing to learn and I’ll bet like the first female House Speaker, Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, she is a fast learner. Palin is a rookie and she knows it. We all have to start somewhere.

Palin’s critics and more than 55% of Americans polled, point out that she is not qualified to be one heart beat away from the Presidency. I beg to differ. Her male predecessors and counterparts were equally unqualified for the job as I have demonstrated above. At the end of the day Vice-Presidential candidates do not matter that much but Palin has given the McCain campaign a much needed energy boost. It’s one of those positions were you learn quickly on the job and can summon any expert under the sun to advise you on a host of matters. You need to be a good listener and a decisive leader. I’m sure Sarah Palin has what it takes and would do a better job for the beleaguered Republicans than George Bush has done.
On a final note, Sarah Palin reminds me of your high school sweetheart, who you take to the road house and the drive-in in your father’s Valiant, who looks at you with pleading hopeful eyes and asks you if you will still respect her in the morning. Maybe I’m naïve and have it completely wrong and instead of you jumping her bones, she’ll jump you.


Palin also reminds me of what Oscar Wilde said about American women:

“American women are pretty and charming: little oases of elegant unreasonableness in a vast desert of practical common sense.”

He also said that “women are sphinxes without secrets” but he was wrong on that score.

Costas Ayiotis
Reflections, meditations and observations from the pavement
14 October 2008
Waterkloof, Pretoria.