Nowadays we have a lot of new names as politicians and some of them are female names, such as Angela Merkel, Marine Le Pen, Hillary Clinton, Dilma Rousseff and so many others. We may have the impression that women are having an important spot in political affairs but one of the most important Prime Minister of England was a woman: Margaret Thatcher, also known as the Iron Lady.
Sometimes women end up as politicians because of their husbands, like what happened with Cristina Kirchner, ex-president of Argentina, that governed the country since 2007, after Néstor Kirchner left the role. Before it, she was the first lady of Argentina. Something similar almost happened with Evita, wife of the ex-Argentinian president, Juan Perón. People used to love her and wanted Eva Peron to be the new president of Argentina, but she was too sick to take place as new governor, so she did a beautiful speech explaining why she couldn’t do that. This part of the history is so important and remarkable that there’s a musical called Evita, with Madonna in the leading role. In the most famous song, the chorus is: “don’t cry for me Argentina, the true is I never left you”, putting Eva Peron as one of the most famous and loved first lady of the world. After Eva passed away, Juan Perón married again with a lady called Isabel Martínez de Perón, who became the president of Argentina at the year of 1974.
Thinking about the history of the United States, we need to talk about Hillary Clinton. She was Bill Clinton’s wife and, even with all the scandals that he was involved, as his famous affair with a White House’s intern, Monica Lewinsky, Hillary Clinton never gave up of their marriage. People always speculated that she stood by his side because Hillary, by that time, already had a will to be important at the United States political scenario, and she achieved that: Hillary Clinton was the 67th United States Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, U.S. Senator from New York from 2001 to 2009 and the Democratic Party’s nominee for President of the United States in the 2016 election.
Unfortunately, there’s one thing that, since always, exist in the political world and that’s the chauvinism. Months before the last US election, a lot of scandals appeared, such as the whole “email” situation involving Hillary Clinton and all the offensives declarations of her opponent, Donald Trump. But, as we live in a patriarchal world, everything that the current president said during his campaign and before it, was forgiven by the precept that he’s a guy and it’s ok to exaggerate reactions, on the other hand, Hillary Clinton was deeply judged because of one thing, that was under investigation, that happened when she was Secretary of State. People appears to forget how important she was to the country, after all, she was in charge when Osama Bin Laden was caught by the USA Army.
In Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, the president that suffered an impeachment last years, was target of a lot of disrespectful things, because people didn’t talk only about her competence; her personal life as also an important subject to tabloids. When Rousseff became a grandmother, a lot was said that she was only a lovely person with her grandson, with any other person tried to talk with her, she was “rude”. The point is not if she was a crass person, but if Dilma Rousseff was a man, that was never a subject of a discussion. Something similar happened to Angela Merkel when an afghan girl cried because of the answer that the chancellor of Germany gave to her about the refugee’s problem: Merkel said to the little girl that she was going to go back to Afghanistan. It’s was not a nice answer but, not trying to make a discussion about the refugee policy, the press made Angela Merkel looks like a witch, questioning “how a woman could be so heartless?”, putting aside that she’s a politician, with qualities and defects. She’s not “a woman” with power, she’s a person with power, and that’s what must be considered, not her gender.
Woman are treated differently in politics and that’s something that needs to change. We can’t give voice and credit only to woman who act tough and sounds rude, it’s important to people who have talent find some space at the scenario. A good chance that may appear is Michele Obama: she was one of the most loved US First Lady and engaged in a lot of causes. A lot of speculated about her taking the position of next candidate of the Democratic Party and, with that, give some hope that women with a serious position but with a kind and gentle way can have the same credit and admiration than any other man.