Women are gaining increasing ground in politics, but Italy is hanging behind, compared to the rest of the world.

Feminists throughout the world cherish the dream that in 2008 Hillary Rodham Clinton will stand for elections for the Democratic Party in the United States and that Condoleezza Rice will stand for the Republican Party. This dream is all but impossible, considering that the former president's wife, who is today a powerful senator of the State of New York, is leading the left wing electorate's list of favourites and that the current Secretary of State is deemed the most balanced and intelligent interpreter of Neoconservative thought in America. If the hope should concretise, it would be a double revolution, an event charged with a global impact and bound to deeply influence political trends in at least half the countries in the world. In fact so far no woman has ever run for the White House for one of the two leading parties; if then there are two of them to guarantee that however things turn out the world's superpower will be guided by a woman's hand for the next four years, we would have reached a crucial turning point. It has so far only been theorised by a TV serial in the United States with Geena Davies playing the president (to be frank, it met with very little success). Our almost daily controversies on the pink quota and the feasibility of legally introducing it would even take on a retro flavour. The topic of women in politics is certainly not new: without tracing history's leading female figures - Isabella the Catholic, Maria Theresa of Austria and Catherine of Russia, who on the other hand did not rise to power through votes but by succession rights - suffice it to think that in the latter half of the last century we had Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir and especially Margaret Thatcher. However during this first glimpse of the new millennium the debate has taken on a more pressing pace and it has especially recorded a series of important novelties both in western industrialised nations and in parts of the world like Latin America, where machismo still prevails. The proportion of female Members of Parliament in the various Parliaments has gradually increased and the awareness that women are more balanced and have more mediation skills than their male colleagues in many public sectors is taking root. It is no mere chance that while the world is still packed with male dictators, we never hear of "female dictators".

Condoleezza Rice

Considering recent events, the most significant one that is charged with consequences is doubtless Angela Merkel's election as Chancellor of the German Federal Republic, especially at a time in which Europe suffers a lack of leadership; hence reaching the top of its richest and most populated country has enabled the former Professor of Physics of Eastern Germany to immediately play a leading role. Mrs. Merkel had to push her way through a swarm of male rivals to emerge in a country, whose southern catholic region, in particular, still associates women with the 3K formula Kinder, Kirche, Kueche, (children, church and kitchen). First during the competition to lead the Christian Democrat Party and then during the real election campaign, she fought against much residual prejudice without ever loosing the calm attitude of a person who does not fear difficulties; this is one of her strong points. When the time came to form her great coalition with the Social Democrats, Angela Merkel insisted on taking an unprecedented number of women along with her to the government; Ursula Van der Leyen stands out among them. She is a lawyer with seven children who better than anyone else embodies the role of the woman who successfully combines political activities and family life. If, till last year, it was deemed that Germany was hanging behind, compared to other leading European countries, concerning the public role of women, now it is avant-garde. But the entire continent is rapidly changing face. Half the Spanish government - a quarter century ago the country could even have been called obscurantist - numbers women and the media believe that Zapatero's deputy, Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, is more influential than the prime minister himself. In France, Ségolène Royal, a woman (not even married) and mother of four children is aiming - backed by a good portion of the Party's ranks - at becoming the Socialist Party's official candidate at the next presidential elections. She is meeting with so much horizontal approval that some surveys even declare that she has an advantage on the probable Gaullist candidate Nicolas Sarkozy. For the French too, a woman on the Elysian fields would be an absolute novelty, so much so that her rivals for the candidacy have not failed to be ironic concerning the difficulties she would have to face in handling both the state and the family. It is however rather odd that the French, who are disaffected as few other Europeans towards the politique politicienne, appreciate the novelty to the point of accepting from Mrs. Royal innovative and politically unfair stands that would have sunk a man by now.

Ségolène Royal

With Margaret Thatcher, winner of three consecutive elections, prime minister for eleven years and especially credited for the British miracle, Great Britain was in some way the forerunner of female progress in Europe. The "Iron Lady" did not only dominate her country's political scene by confining her male colleagues to supporting roles, but she also has the credit of having reversed the entire continent's economic trends by encouraging the success of liberism on statism, which prevailed in the '60s and '70s. Besides she was too much of an anomalous figure to leave heirs, and all three British parties are once again led by men today. But Blair, keeping the revolution in mind, in turn inserted a large one third of women in his team, numbering Margaret Beckett, the first woman in history to be the prestigious Minister of Foreign Affairs. Scandinavian countries have always been ahead of others. Absolute equality of the sexes had already been achieved on various occasions both in the Parliaments and in the division of the ministries. For the past five years Finland has had a woman president (Tarja Hanonen), Norway has had a woman leader of government (Gro Harlem Brundtland) and Sweden should have one very soon. Some half-jockingly theorise that in twenty years there will be no discussion on the pink quota, but rather on the blue one in those regions to make some room for men. Sociologists tend to explain the trend with the considerable support the State has given women who have wanted to be deeply involved in work during the first half of the past century, but this trend is probably also rooted in history. The equality of sexes in politics is extending from Scandinavia to neighbouring Baltic countries, while progress is rather slow in the rest of former communist Europe and even more so in Russia. Lastly the female presence in the European Commission, which is steadily increasing from one quinquennium to the next, is rather significant as if it were a general thermometer of the situation. We have already had female commissioners of almost every nationality, including Emma Bonino, who has so far been the only Italian woman in this organ. If then we move out of the European framework, we will find quite a few surprises. Latin America made an impressive quality leap last year with the election of Michelle Bachelet, another single woman with three children she had from three different men, as president of Chile: till then the only cases had been Isabelita Peron, who was elected president of Argentina not through personal merit, but only because she was Juan's widow, and Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, president of Nicaragua for a five year period after the Sandinist spell, which led the country into conflict with the United States. Not satisfied, Bachelet, a physician, has also inserted 50 per cent of women in her government, though their role in society is clearly inferior. We shall now wait and see whether from Chile, which is under many respects the most "European" of South American countries, the trend will also extend beyond the borders. A few months ago we witnessed another "first time" with the victory of Mrs. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, an almost seventy year old woman and former executive of the World Bank, in the Liberian presidential elections.

Angela Merkel

She is the first African woman to achieve this. Those who know Subsaharian Africa's social structure will recognise the special event, which results from both western influence and the early stages of the evolution of customs, which could - in perspective - subvert millenary traditions. We must however say that for now Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is rara avis in gurgite vasto [a rare bird in an immense sea]: there are no other women in the rest of the black continent who can make a bid for power; besides the growing Muslim influence, which is gradually expanding from north to south, both along its Attic and Indian Ocean banks, will make their task difficult. In fact Muslim countries, especially the Arab ones, are the last real bulwarks of male chauvinism. The mere idea that Egypt, Syria or even the new Iraq could ever be guided by women is a pure flight of imagination today; on the contrary, we must fear that the success of extremist trends could make the fair sex even lose the progress it has achieved with such effort in recent decades. The only women who have even temporarily reached the leadership of Muslim countries so far are Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan and Megawathi Sukarno in Indonesia, but they have done so only by hereditary right. In fact both are daughters and heirs of leading political men who had remarkable popular support and it is thanks to their respective fathers' prestige that they triumphed at the polls. On the other hand throughout Asia family bonds often project women towards political leadership. It is, for instance, rather unlikely that Indira Gandhi, who long dominated the Indian political scene and proved to be a worthy statistician, would ever have become Prime Minister if she had not been the daughter of Pandit Nehru; and, her daughter-in-law, the Italian Sonia Maino, would never have played a leading role in the State if she had not been Rajiv's widow and the only member of the family who could accept its heritage. The same applies to Sirimavo Bandaranaike who became president of Sri Lanka in 1959 substituting her husband who was murdered, and her daughter Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, who succeeded the mother thirty years later and is still in office. Concerning Bangladesh, in the past decade the political battle has been between Khaleda Zia, widow of former president Ziaur Rahman, and Hasina Wazed, daughter of the "father of the homeland" Sheikh Mujib; they take it in turns to head the government depending on the outcome of elections.
The Philippines are a stronghold of "pink power", but here too women did not always reach the top only through personal merit. Corazon Aquino succeeded Ferdinando Marcos in 1986 only because she was the widow of Benigno, the opposition leader, whose murder was ordered by the dictator; then, the current president Gloria Arroyo would never have become Number One if she did not belong to one of the leading families of the archipelago. Today's great unknown factor is the future of women in politics in East Asia's three major countries: China, Japan and South Korea, whose cultural traditions are not particularly encouraging but which, as the homeland of one fourth of mankind, can considerably influence the rest of the world.
It is true that China's recent history boasts an empress, Tzu-Shi, who played a leading role in good and bad times, but it is equally true that, since the Communist Party rose to power in 1948, the only woman who really meant something was Mao's third wife, Chang Ching, who inspired the famous "group of four". Otherwise there are just a few ministers, but inserted in a pattern, which guarantees male prevalence. Japan, which is doubtless the Asian country that is most open to western influence, has done no better. The Socialist Party had a woman leader, Mrs. Sugawa, for some time, but they hurriedly got rid of her after the first defeat at the election polls. The Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled the country since World War 2 with just one interruption, has only one woman in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mrs. Tanaka who is in turn daughter and political heir of a former prime minister.
We can complete the survey by adding that remote, but highly developed New Zealand has so far been the only country in the world to have had two women prime ministers elected consecutively: the conservative Jenny Shipley in 1997 and the member of the Labour Party Helen Clark in 1999.
Italy doubtless seems a long way behind in this scene. Though there have been women ministers since the dawn of the Republic, only few have left a lasting mark and none (with the partial exception of Mrs. Bonino) have ever been leaders of an important party. The local situation is a little better with two regional presidents on twenty (Presso in Piedmont and Lorenzetti in Umbria) and a certain number of mayors in leading cities (i.e. Ms. Moratti in Milan and Ms. Russo-Jervolino in Naples). Foreign influence could however change things rather soon, but not by decree: women themselves must overcome their reluctance and commit themselves deeply as Americans and Scandinavians do.

Livio Caputo