“As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.”
– Virginia Woolf
1966. James Brown sings ‘this is a man’s world’ to the planet, and men everywhere quote it to women while women everywhere bristle at the fact Brown is absolutely right (about it being a man’s world, not the rest of the lyrics where he in true chauvinist fashion attributes all developments of society to men.)
2011. It’s still a man’s world, and men everywhere are still quoting it while women everywhere are still bristling because today, nearly half a century later, Brown is still right.
Slightly more than half the people living on this earth are women, yet only 8% of the world’s nations have elected a female leader. If one was to give an example of the most disparate figures, this would be it. Disparate to the extent where I think it is an absolute joke because women, not to be bigoted or anything, are absolutely incredible.
Aside from the overused cliché of the fact women are capable of giving birth, although that in itself is an indication of the threshold of pain a female can tolerate, a woman possesses astounding levels of compassion and empathy, a skill which if possessed by the males who have been elected our leaders today, would drastically cut down the wars being fought globally and increase international cooperation.
If women were in office, conversations between leaders would be:
“Yes we have distinctly dissimilar views on the matter concerning nuclear weapons. Shall we discuss it over lunch and see if we can come to a compromise?”
As opposed to current discussions, driven by high levels of testosterone, between the male world leaders of today:
“Your view regarding nuclear weapons is absolute rubbish. I have no interest in discussing it anymore. I declare war on you and your country!”
Genetically, all living humans today descend from one woman: mitochondrial Eve who is estimated to have lived 200 000 years ago in East Africa. A common fallacy (very likely they were circulated by men) was that she lived the same time as Y-chromosomal Adam who is the most recent male-line ancestor of all living men; however they lived thousands of years apart (it goes without saying it was Eve who came first, living 50 000 to 80 000 years earlier.) In addition to that, the Y chromosome found in men is in fact a mutation from the original human chromosomes of XX, found in (wait for it) women.
So how did a variation (technically a mutation) of the modern human specie come to dominate society and successfully oppress that which brought them forth?
Sexism was probably present since the Stone Age. The man who could grunt 3 syllables would have effortlessly trumped a fully literate woman capable of coherent speech to be the leader of a clan. The man with a stick would have got the imperative task of hunter when up against a woman fully equipped with bow and arrow and the knowledge on how to use the tools effectively (which is more than one can attribute to the men of the time who probably threw stones at a 12 foot tall woolly mammoth with designs to kill it and not just give it a pleasant back massage). The man who ate cooked meat would have been given precedence over the woman who not only cooked the meat for him but also may have discovered the fire on which to cook it on.
Aside from the fact that male brains were probably not fully developed at the time (they still aren’t today because if they were chauvinists and misogynists would realise the ignorance and general stupidity of their beliefs) and so did not have the capacity to understand the extent to which a woman can contribute and provide, back in the Stone Age the gift of brute strength would have generally garnered more appreciation than the potential to effortlessly attain a PhD. I’m not delusional; I never said women are physically stronger, so in a society where strength is your ticket to advancement in the hierarchy I understand why women were left behind. What I protest to is the fact that as civilisation progressed and attainment in life depended on more than if you could pick up a tree with your bare hands, the role of women and their freedom in society remained the same – horribly suppressed. However in certain cultures (at the beginning anyway, before the trend of oppressing the women spread), women were leaders as early as 1500 BC. Queen Hatshepsut from Egypt for example ruled 1503-1482 BC, and remains one of the most successful pharaohs in Egyptian history. If we’re talking powerful and ambitious Egyptian queens one can’t omit Cleopatra who ruled 69-30 BC using a combination of political intelligence, foresight, charisma and beauty to manipulate not one but two Roman generals to secure protection for Egypt. Unfortunately this trend of instating female leaders did not catch on so fast (and to be honest, the only reason Hatshepsut and Cleopatra even became queen is because of their family, not some referendum where they had a landslide victory because Egyptians embraced the idea of a female queen so enthusiastically.)
When looking back in history it seems the world experienced a fair bit of female leaders, but was there ever a time when they weren’t surrounded by a group of men telling them what to do and how to run things because they thought they knew better? The answer is no. But women leaders are, well, women, gifted with as much intelligence (if not more) than men, and so adroitly ignored the persistent input of males around them and ran things as they wished. Queen Elizabeth I for starters, remained a virgin queen (politically anyway) using her unmarried status as a diplomatic tool and resisting consistent and strong pressures to marry and shaped a large part of England’s character today.
The emancipation of women only truly began last century as they began to break free of the shackles that had been imposed on them for hundreds of years. As late as the early 20th century George Bernard Shaw was considered a radical for advocating equality amongst gender. The human race has been in existence 200 000 years, and dominated by men for the majority of the time. Nearly a fifth of a million years of suppression only began ebbing away in the 20th century; it’s a process which takes time and effort – to fight for the rights that should have been ours from the get-go. Of course you have those who just want equality with men, and then those who aim for female world supremacy for the next 200 000 years (in true an eye for an eye fashion) but after all, both are practically the same.
I have a theory as to why the right to exercise power and opinion of women has been subjugated practically since the beginning of time (since Ancient Egypt couldn’t lead by example due to the lack of television, radio, global chart-topping hits etc. to spread the message of their fantastic female leader):
Subconsciously, men are afraid.
They are completely petrified of the force which encompasses a woman because they know women are capable of so much. To be more precise, they know women are capable of so much more than them. Thus, men make every effort to subdue their voices because even their ancestors, 3-syllable grunting hunters, realised the threat and set the motion for the oppression of women’s rights for the last 200 000 odd years. They’ll never admit it. To cover it up, one will hear the familiar tripe and see the tell-tale signs of the spread of an arrogant facial expression and superior tone of voice as they talk about women being a weaker gender and how their sensitivity is a liability in the world of leadership. This goes on to lead to the general problems of the world being blamed on women, just as Nancy Astor once said, ‘In passing, also, I would like to say that the first time Adam had a chance he laid the blame on a woman.’
Overpopulation? Damned women giving birth to too many children.
Dangers of nuclear power? Damned Marie Curie and her discovery of radiation.
Traffic? Damned lady drivers.
Maureen Murphy is quoted as saying, ‘The reason there are so few female politicians is that it is too much trouble to put makeup on two faces.’ But in fact both socially and politically, women have come a very long way in a short time. In 1952, Elizabeth II became the Queen of the United Kingdom. She has been a first-hand witness of a period of great social change that has swept across Great Britain and the world, still ruling today with dignity and class.
In 1960, Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka became the world’s first female head of government. In 1988, Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan became the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state. In 1997 Mary McAleese of Ireland became president, and still is today, making her the longest serving female head of state following the retirement of Chandrika Kumaratunga of Sri Lanka. In 2005 Germany, a country that has been dominated by males all through history, elected Angela Merkel, its first woman chancellor. In 2006, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia became Africa’s first elected female head of state.
It’s interesting to note that smaller developing countries have had more female leaders than those that are developed. Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia (the world’s most populous Muslim country), the Philippines, Bangladesh, Liberia, yet USA, the world’s supposed superpower has never had a female president. After Margaret Thatcher in 1979, the UK hasn’t seen a woman come close to Number 10 Downing Street. Since Catherine de Medici in 1519, France has never had a female leader.
But this is a time of great change, and it is certainly going in the right direction. Perhaps I’m being too optimistic but surely in 200 years there will be eternal hits about it being ‘a woman’s world’?
