Hard heartedness

Iconic women who gained high office during the last century became warriors rather than peacemakers on the international scene and did not exercise power any differently than men, demonstrating an unfortunate equality between genders.

Following her death last week at 84, former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright has been lauded as a pillar of democracy and a humanitarian. As the first woman to reach this position, she was also deemed as a shining exemplar for young women seeking to make a career in politics and other fields. She possessed neither of these attributes and her behaviour should warn women not to follow her example.

She allied with undemocratic autocrats and was an advocate and practitioner of US coercive diplomacy through the imposition of punitive sanctions or application of military force. While she was secretary of state the US and NATO used bombing in Serbia to end the war in Bosnia, in Iraq after UN weapons inspectors were expelled and in Serbia to free Kosovo.

She famously revealed her hard heartedness in a US television interview on May 12, 1996, when she was asked by Leslie Stahl, “We have heard that a half million children have died [as a result of sanctions against Iraq]...that is more children than died in Hiroshima.. is the price worth it?”

Albright replied, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it.” At that time she was US ambassador to the UN under President Bill Clinton who ap-pointed her secretary of state in January 1997 and continued to impose sanctions on Iraq until that administration left office in 2001.

Other famous women who reached the pinnacle of power in their homelands have been similarly ready to use economic and military power at their disposal as well as hardhearted.

Sirimavo Bandaranaike was the world’s first female prime minister and served three terms: 1960–1965, 1970–1977 and 1994–2000. She oversaw the transformation of the Dominion of Ceylon, a half-free British colony, into the Republic of Sri Lanka and used force to put down domestic uprisings and civil conflict and weathered economic crises.

The second woman to become prime minister was India’s Indira Gandhi. She was the country’s third and the only woman to achieve that role which she held from 1967-77 and from 1980-84. Before the 1967 general election the Congress party’s male clique chose as leader “the girl,” daughter of India’s founding father Jawaharlal Nehru. The men thought they could use her as a figurehead while they ruled. But Gandhi, who had been her father’s confidante, promptly seized the reins of power. Her 1971 war against Pakistan ended in the emergence of Bangladesh; she carried out a crack-down on civil liberties between 1975-77; and she fought an internal battle against Sikh separatism which led to her assassination in 1984.

Golda Meir, Israel’s fourth prime minster, was in office from 1969-74. She had already served as labour minister and foreign minister. Like Albright, she became infamous when, in June 1969, she was quoted in the Washington Post and London’s Sunday Times as saying, “There were no such thing as Palestinians” although in 1948 when Israel waged its war of establishment Palestinians accounted for two-thirds of the population of Palestine.  

She asked, “When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? … It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.” Like the half million children of Iraq who did not exist for Albright during the US-driven sanctions regime, Palestinians did not exist for Meir, who was of Ukrainian Jewish stock.

Meir was in office when Egypt and Syria mounted the 1973 October war, surprising Israel and enabling Egypt to regain territory in Sinai and Syria to recapture the Golan Heights seized by Israel in the 1967 war. Meir mobilised Israel’s forces which, after an infusion of US weaponry, rolled back the Egyptians and Syrians. However, her handling of the pre-war Arab build-up near Israel precipitated the “generals’ war” which shook up the army’s high command and led to her resignation in 1974.

Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, dubbed the “Iron Lady” for her uncompromising ideological stance and syle of leadership, was the world’s sixth modern female prime minister. She took office in 1979 and initiated unpopular economic reforms and privatisation of nationalised industries but was rescued by Britain’s victory in the 1982 war with Argentina over the British-colonised Falkland Islands. She resigned in 1990 after her leadership was challenged within her party.

Clearly, the assumption that women, seen as the nurturing sex, will promote peace rather than war is false. There have, however, been exceptions: Ireland’s first female president Mary Robinson (1990-97,  a human rights advocate who became UN High Commissioner for Human Rights where she served from 1997-2002.

She was succeeded by Mary McAleese (1997-2011), the first Irish president who hailed from British-annexed Northern Ireland. She sought to “build bridges” between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland and promoted equality, inclusion, anti-sectarianism and reconciliation on the divided island.

It must be noted that Ireland is a special case because it commits no foreign aggression and its military deploys in peacekeeping around the world.

Africa’s first elected female president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia was briefly imprisoned in 2005 for criticising the military regime but, in 2006, was elevated to the presidency and served until 2018. She promoted the efforts of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate abuses during the country’s 20 -year civil war but was unable to punish perpetrators. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for drawing women into the peace process.

This century’s star woman prime minister is New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern who has imported female sensibilities into the job of governing by committing to the reduction of child poverty while promoting overall family welfare and native Māori rights. She promptly took charge of the fall-out from the March 2019 mosque shootings in Christchurch, where 51 Muslims were killed and 49 wounded. She visited the sites and comforted the families and propelled through parliament legislation to control firearms. Ardern and European women heads of government were among the most successful leaders in handling COVID.