Women at the Helm

They are on the rise, these women.  Hillary Clinton is on the frontline as a presidential contender in the next US elections.  Angela Merkel is the sitting Chancellor, the first woman to be so in Germany, while Segolene Royal had just given newly elected French president Nicolas Sarkozy a serious runoff in an election with a staggering turnout of voters.  Had Royal won, it would have been a first, and a sight, to see three women leaders (should Hillary win) of three of the world’s influential countries huddle and decide on geopolitics and foreign policy.

History shows that women power was already in place way back in ancient times.  Before Christ, names like Hatshepsut, Nefertiti and Cleopatra ruled Egypt, the land of early civilization and great heritage not suffering from a lack of machos.

Women rulers of old were mostly heirs, but then so were the men rulers. And if some men rulers wrested the throne and deposed the king, so did some women rulers.  Others settled for ruling from behind the throne or took over their husbands.

Syria’s Zenobia took over her murdered husband in the third century AD and defeated Claudius of the marauding Romans.  Claudius’s successor Aurelian took four years of battles and sieges before Zenobia’s capital city of Palmyra fell.  She was captured and paraded in gold chains in Rome and then exiled to Tibur.

Pulcheria (AD 399-453) of Asia Minor, in what is present-day Turkey was the power behind the throne of her brother Anastasius II.  She reconvened the Council of Ephesus.  It was in this Council that the Virgin Mary was declared the “Mother of God.”

One of the most influential figures of 12th century Europe was Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen of both England and France.  She married the king of France, divorced him, and married the king of England.  She bore eight children, two of them future kings of England.

Isabella I of Castille, queen of Spain (1451-1504), governed independently with her husband, King Ferdinand of Aragon, while the 16th century empress of Russia, Catherine the Great, unseated her husband Tsar Peter, orchestrated his death, and proclaimed herself sole ruler of Russia.  She passed herself off as an enlightened ruler by supporting progressive ideas, like reforms in law and education.

Elizabeth I (1533-1603) of England, whose reign was called the Elizabethan Age, made England a strong European power and commercial force and her court a great center of learning and intellectual accomplishment.  She also had her own cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, whom she saw as a threat to her throne, executed for conspiracy against her.

Out of Africa, Zawditi, empress of Ethiopia from 1917-1930, was the first woman ruler in over 3000 years of Ethiopian history while Nana Yaa Asantewaa of Ghana led his country in its fight against British hegemony during her reign.

Another warrior-queen was Lakshmi Bhai, queen of Jhansi, India, who died in the hands of the British on the second day of fighting as she defended her country on the eastern side.

Today’s Arab world may not have a female ruler, but around 700 BC, there were Arab warrior queens, Zabibi and her successor Samsi, who reigned and commanded armies made of a large number of women who fought the Assyrians.

The world’s first woman elected to lead a country is Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka, who was at her country’s helm in 1960-65, 1970-77, and again in 1994.

Neighboring Bangladesh had women leaders too, though their political catfights against each other, which are more personal than idelogical, had almost brought the country to its knees in over a decade.  Some Bangladeshis wish that former prime ministers Begum Khaleda Zia and Shaik Hasina are exiled.

Twenty-one years ago, our own country had its first female president, which makes today’s sitting president the second female to lead the country.  Other countries with claims to having elected female leaders in their history are Norway, Canada, New Zealand, Argentina, and Nicaragua.

The first women prime ministers of Israel, India and Britain brought their countries to war during their terms of office.  Golda Meir had the Yom Kippur War or October War of 1973, Indira Gandhi had war with Pakistan that resulted in the founding of Bangladesh, and Margaret Thatcher had the Falklands War with Argentina.  Ancient or modern, hereditary queen or elected, history shows that women at the helm don’t run away from a good fight.

(13 May 2007)