Do women leaders matter?

Here are Nicholas Kristof's thoughts on the issue:

There’s a natural tendency to think that the oppression so many women face around the world is just a function of male exploitation, and that the solution is simply more women leaders. In fact, a quick look at Bangladesh shows that it is far more complicated than that. Bangladesh has a woman prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, who has done nothing much for women – and who now is pursuing a campaign of vilification against Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who has been a champion of impoverished women all around the globe.

Yunus, as you probably know, was one of the founders of microfinance and started Grameen Bank to give impoverished women a chance to start businesses and generate income. He has helped millions and millions of women in Bangladesh and in a growing number of other countries around the world, and he has also been a formidable advocate for equal rights and opportunities for women. Indeed, it’s difficult to think of two individuals who have done more for the women of the world over the last few decades than Yunus and another Bangladeshi man, Fazle Abed, the founder of an extraordinary Bangladeshi anti-poverty organization, BRAC. Microfinance is no panacea, but 8 million Grameen borrowers in Bangladesh are testimony that it can make a difference.

But when Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize, many Bangladeshis – especially politicians like Sheikh Hasina – were jealous. An abortive political bid by Yunus also left them nervous that he might pursue a political future. And Yunus has a talent for self-promotion that left some Bangladeshis carping that he’s a showboat, that his model doesn’t work, that he was out for himself, and so on. In the last month or so, Sheikh Hasina has persistently gone after Yunus, pushing him out of his job at Grameen Bank and pursuing legal charges against him that block him from traveling and could send him to prison.

It’s astonishing – and so disappointing – to see a woman prime minister who does nothing for her country’s women go after a man who has devoted his life to helping the neediest women. And it’s a reminder that the struggle to achieve gender equality is not a battle between the sexes, but something far more subtle. It’s often about misogyny and paternalism, but those are values that are absorbed and transmitted almost as much by women as by men.

It’s obviously unfair to see Sheikh Hasina as representative of women leaders, just as it would be unfair to see Muammar al-Qaddafi as representative of male leaders. My own view is that it’s important to have more women leaders partly because symbolism counts — at the margin, a woman at the top does change perceptions about women and leadership. Women leaders do matter. But it’s less obvious to me that women leaders at the top of a country, at least initially, go out of their way to improve things for women citizens at the bottom. When Sheryl and I were writing Half the Sky, we tried to investigate this issue. Sometimes there are women leaders who make a profound difference (Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is an example of a woman politician who uses her political capital to call attention to global women’s issues and make a real difference). But overall, we found no correlation between a female president or prime minister and any improvements in girls’ education or maternal health or any other improvement in the status of women. If you look at the Philippines for example, it has been the female presidents (Corazon Aquino and Gloria Arroyo) who have curbed women’s access to family planning, and male presidents like Fidel Ramos and Joseph Estrada who have done much more for women’s reproductive health.

But if it doesn’t necessarily matter for girls’ education or family planning access whether a woman is at the top of the pyramid, it does seem to matter a great deal whether women are in politics at lower levels. The best evidence is from India, where robust evidence shows that a woman as village chief improves access to water (which is women’s work in the villages). And anecdotally we found that to be true: women leaders at the local level do push to address these issues. So don’t lose faith – women do matter when they get in power. It’s just that, at least initially, they may matter most at the grassroots level (some studies suggest it is a question of critical mass: a female prime minister may be one of the very few women in the cabinet).

The lesson isn’t that women should be PTA presidents and forget about higher office. We desperately do need more women presidents and prime ministers — and U.N. Secretaries General — and some have been spectacularly effective. And my sense is that in countries like Rwanda that have more women in parliament, that translates to a real difference in policy on some issues like girls’ education. But I am trying to say that it’s too complex a world to think that electing a woman, any woman, is a quick fix.

And let’s remember that just as the struggle for women’s rights isn’t a battle between men and women, it’s also not the case that the only beneficiaries will be women. When girls get educated, when women enter the formal labor force, when female talent can be realized, then all society benefits, men along with women. That’s because, put simply, the most effective way to fight global poverty, to reduce civil conflict, even to reduce long-term carbon emissions, is typically to invest in girls’ education and bring women into the formal labor force. Investment in women is an idea that is gaining ground lately because it is a proven strategy that works.

And a final thought: let’s hope that a century from now, these issues are moot – and no one even notices that it is the 200th anniversary of International Women’s Day. That would be a measure of success.

Your thoughts on this tangled issue? Have I gotten myself into hot water here?

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