BROOKINGS From Brazil to Bangladesh, Liberia to Iceland, electorates granted access to women to serve as political executives, and in some cases for several terms. Add to that roster the United Kingdom, India, Mexico and Italy. But why not the United States? For Hilary Clinton, it was close but no cigar sort of, in a fashion, with Clinton taking the popular vote but not winning the electoral college.
At 6 p.m. Thursday, May 8, in the Cooper Room at the Brookings Public Library, the South Dakota World Affairs Council is hosting a presentation by Evren Celik Wiltse, an associate professor of political science at South Dakota State University: The driver for Wiltses presentation is a book she co-authored with Lisa Hager, a fellow associate professor of political science at SDSU.
The above quoted excerpt is from Chapter 1 of their book. Womens Paths to Power: Female Presidents & Prime Ministers, 1960-2020. For Wiltse, its a return to presenting for the SDWAC.
My prior presentations were more about U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, more my original specialty. Im more of a generalist, she explained. Ive traveled, studied and researched quite a few countries. Anything world affairs, Im comfortable to talk about.
On Tuesday of the past week, the professor talked with The Brookings Register about her upcoming SDWAC presentation.
The book took more than a year to write; it was published in 2021, so the authors closed with 2020. It kind of worked out nice, with two zero-endings, slightly over 100 women all across, Wiltse said. But the origin of the book was actually Latin America because I was teaching Latin American politics and I noticed how quite a few women presidents were emerging from this region. Look how many presidents they have elected and the U.S is still trying to elect one. It was building up momentum for the (Hilary) Clinton candidacy. But theres not that many women we can actually look at, not just Latin America; so thats how it expanded.
Such a powerful position: this is the executive branch, Wiltse noted. You execute, you exercise power. You have the power to say, Yes; no; we do it this way; we do it that way. These were the presidents and the prime ministers.
Youve got the top seat. How did you get there? That was our question. The book moves from the general to the particular, citing in separate chapters a trio of paths.
Family, activist, political career
Chapter 2 looks at The Family Path: A key finding early on for the book, noted by Wiltse, was that she and Hager found women were riding on the family name. So they were coming from this or that political dynastic family.
The family path was about 15 percent, with Wiltse calling it an earlier path; but there are women who are more activists.
Chapter 3 considers The Activist Path: Women who are fighting for something, whether its independence or anti-corruption, they have that kind of fighting their way up, Wiltse explained. And thats about another 15 percent or so of the sample that we had.
Finally comes Chapter 4, which had the largest number of women, more than half of them: The Political Career Path. They were career politicians. They had steady careers; they kind of moved up in the party ranks. They established themselves. They were not super activists. They didnt have a family legacy.
Once we had defined these three paths, we wanted to look at which paths are valid in which cases. One interesting finding we had was that if a country is developed, like the U.S. economically developed, democratically developed they do not have a family path for women. The family path doesnt work in those kind of families. They have a career path, they have an activist path, but the family path is less than 5 percent in advanced democracies.
Do women serving as governors in the United States fit into the three paths? The professor said they do not, because not very many countries have federal systems. Thats kind of unique to the United States, Germany, Brazil, Mexico. But thats certainly a very relevant spinoff.
However, with Hillary Clinton as an example, Wiltse noted that the name, family path in the U.S., it works for men (but) doesnt work for women. There have been dynasties, the Bushes obviously. There have been multiple cases where the family name propels men, male politicians, to the top seat in advanced democracies but it repels the female politicians. Thats one big finding that we had.
The two professors looked at slightly more than 100 women who had made it to the post of chief executive; they found that more than 75 percent of them had cabinet experience; they served as secretary of this, secretary of that, head of the treasury, secretary of state, secretary of defense, justice minister. They are called ministers in other parliamentary countries. That is one of the biggest ways women can show their competence. Wiltse cited Chile and the United Kingdom as examples.
Once women plow the trail, it makes it so much easier for the next woman.
Where goes Kristi Noem?
Does Wiltse have a takeaway message as to a path a woman might take if she aspires to be a nations chief executive officer? Dont go for family, celebrity, or name recognition.
She noted that a political career track is the most solid way (to go); 60 percent of women leaders have that track. A political career track is the most solid way for the U.S. to elect its first woman president.
In response to a question from the Register about governorships in the United States, noted above as a very relevant spinoff, and South Dakotas first woman to be elected governor now the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security the professor responded: There is nothing about Kristi Noem in the book; but what shes doing is so much more conducive to top leadership than just being elected to the Congress (which she has been, as South Dakotas at-large, sole member of the U.S. House of Representatives).
She is working in what I call the Holy Trinity of political science: the judiciary, legislative, executive. So you want executive power, its better to have other executive experiences. She had the governorship experience and now shes in the cabinet. Thats a very important position. And whatever shes doing, shes making a big noise about it. Those are signals to the electorate: I can do a mans job.
Its very strong, shes very ambitious. Thats all we care (about); we dont care about ideology; we dont care if you like her or not; were just looking at which path takes women to the top.
Shes really playing it marvelously. You may disagree with what shes saying but shes playing it so well.
One final question from the Register: Since there are so many women voters in the United States, couldnt their sheer numbers get a woman elected president? While there are a lot of variables at play here, there may be one simple answer: Women dont vote as a bloc.
Contact John Kubal at [email protected].
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