The past week highlighted the gains women have made in getting elected to leadership positions.
1) Dalia Grybauskaite, was elected Sunday as the first female president of Lithuania, the Baltic nation battling a particularly deep recession.
Ms. Grybauskaite, 53, a tough-talking former finance minister with a black belt in karate, ran as an independent candidate, enhancing her popularity in contrast to the main political parties, whose standings were undermined by the economic downturn and allegations of corruption.
With 96 percent of votes counted, she secured a little more than 68 percent support. Turnout was 51 percent, just above the 50 percent needed to give her a first-round victory and avoid a runoff.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/world/europe/18lithuania.html?ref=world
2) In India Sonia Gandhi lead her National Indian Congress Party to the most sweeping election victory in the last 25 years.
“NEW DELHI — Eleven years ago, when she took over as president of India’s oldest political party, Sonia Gandhi was seen as India’s most improbable politician: a foreigner with a shaky command of Hindi, reclusive to the point of seeming aloof, a wife who had fought to keep her husband from joining politics and who lost him to an assassination.
Today, Mrs. Gandhi, 62, is credited with having scored a stunning political coup. Her Indian National Congress party made its best performance in 25 years in the parliamentary elections completed last week, picking up 205 of 543 seats on its own, and with its coalition partners coming only 12 seats shy of an outright majority. All it needs to do now to form a government is stitch up alliances with a handful of independents and small parties.
No longer would it be beholden to the many small party bosses that it needed during the first five-year term a Congress-led coalition was in office. Most important, for the sake of foreign and economic policy, it would no longer have to rely on India’s Communist parties to stay in power, as it had for most of that time.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/world/asia/18india.html?pagewanted=1&hpw
3) The most surprising, almost shocking, election results was that for the first time in it’s history Kuwaitis elected four women to it’s parliament.
KUWAIT CITY (AP) — Kuwaitis elected female parliament members for the first time and rejected a number of Islamic fundamentalist candidates in a weekend vote that many hoped would bring stability to the country’s rocky political scene.
Women gained the right to vote and run for office in 2005 but failed in two previous elections to win seats in the 50-member parliament. Four women were elected in Saturday’s vote, according to official results read out by judges on state-owned TV on Sunday.
Kuwait has led the region in giving its people democratic rights. It has an elected parliament that wields considerable power, but the Cabinet is still chosen and led by a ruling family that holds ultimate power.
Radical religious politicians have fought against extending political rights to women. And at the same time, they have pushed for full implementation of Islamic law, or Sharia, in the oil-rich U.S. ally.
”This is a message that the Kuwaiti society has started to move away from such movements that are based on hatred,” said political commentator Sami al-Nisf.
One of the most postive changes that has occurred since I was growing up has been the opportunity that women have gained, fought for, to obtain positions of leadership. In the world of the 1940’s I was born into a women’s place was in the kitchen, not the executive lounge. The glass ceiling does still exist, but it is starting to crack.
What would you say has been the most significant change to your society in the years since you were born?
6 comments
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May 19, 2009 at 8:42 am
Indian Lake Papa
Ed, i am so old – power steering & cruise control – As old as I am, electricity was here – but we did have an out house!
May 19, 2009 at 4:43 pm
edfromct
As a child I have vague memory of visiting my grandfathers apple farm in Maine, and there being no indoor plumbing. I do know there were the first house in town to have both indoor plumbing and electricity.
Of course the town, Hope, Maine, consisted of about 10 families on one street, with a “general” store.
May 19, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Rain
Hmm, it does seem times are changing for the women! I must be honest that I have never grown up in a place or time where women were oppressed and so I have never really had issues with either men or women being in a place of authority, although I was brought up quite traditionally and so would have to say I prefer men in power. Ha! Some feminist might burn me:)
But there has been a big uproar here in SA this week because the Premier of the Western Cape, Helen Zille (also the [female] leader of the official opposition party) chose an all male provincial cabinet. Something about setting a bad example on gender issues. I say, male or female, as long as the job gets done;)
May 19, 2009 at 4:57 pm
edfromct
Helen Zille does have an impressive record. Per Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Zille
“Zille’s work as mayor, and in particular her successes in tackling crime, drug abuse and unemployment in Cape Town, led to her selection as World Mayor of the Year in 2008 – from a field of 820 candidates. She was also chosen as Newsmaker of the year 2006 by the National Press Club in July 2007″
Zille’s response to the issue:
“[T]he (male) gender commissioner has remained silent about the extreme sexism of the ANC Youth League and the Umkhonto we Sizwe War Veterans Association that both accused me of appointing men to my Cabinet in return for sexual favours. Contrast the commissioner’s silence on this issue with his vocal threats to take me to court to impose quotas on the Western Cape Cabinet. His obsession with quotas is actually a useful diversion from the real issues that oppress women in South Africa.”
In the long run I don’t think quota’s work. Real progress is made when every person has the same opportunities regardless of sex, or race, or religion.
May 20, 2009 at 12:36 am
lovewillbringustogether
Probably the most significant change to my society since i was born is the fact that there are now living more than twice as many humans on our shared planet as there were at the time i was born – a growth rate unequalled in history.
Technologic and economic changes mean we humans now are capable of seriously altering the delicate balance our planet needs to keep ALL living organisms in a harmonious balance.
Before i was born mankind merely had the ability to destroy his local environment and he would then move somewhere ‘nicer’ that he had not polluted or over-used beyond it’s capacity to regenerate.
Today he is finding there are far fewer places to run to and there are no longer enough natural resources easily obtainable from other countries or his own to support his extravagant, wasteful lifestyle.
Even so, many of us do not see the lessons being taught us by nature and believe ‘all will be well’ and things can go on – or even improve – so i’ll just keep on doing what i always did.
Some are waking up but in the main it is too little way too late.
As bad as it is becoming with 6.5 billion of us and about 20% of those having a ‘developed’ lifestyle’ it will be five times worse when there are 10 billion of us and 50% of those having ‘our’ priviliges.
This is likely to happen in our children’s lifetimes, possibly even our own if we live another 50 years – i pity them, and moreso the billions that will die or lose it all, as a result of our ignorance.
The good news? in a thousand years or so the earth might once again recover enough to let a new bunch of species evolve to take the places of the ones we wipe out in our decline.
i’m not currently too worried about our planet’s future survival. Just man’s.
<B
May 20, 2009 at 3:34 pm
edfromct
I agree that population growth continues to be a problem in many parts of the world.
The rate of growth has stabilized in “Western” countries, Europe, the US, etc. It has even dropped in Central and Eastern Europe, South Africa and Japan. It remains high the Muslim Middle East, Catholic Latin America, South and Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
I will guess that religious opposition to birth control, tradition bound family practises, and a lack of sex education in poverty stricken areas of Asia and Africa, are the primary reasons the birth rate remains high were it does.
I am optimistic about mankind’s survival, 10,000 or more years into the future. I do agree that if we don’t make dramatic changes in the way we live, and I am don’t see much evidence that we will, there will be severe consequences to future generations. Perhaps some plague, or environmental catastrophe, will wipe out large segments of the world population, as the black plague did in the middle ages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth
“The actual annual growth in the number of humans fell from its peak of 87.5 million per annum in 1989, to a low of 76.4 million per annum in 2002, at which it stabilised and has started to slowly rise again to 79.4 million per annum in 2007, and 80.2 million per annum in 2009. Growth remains high in the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa.
“Some countries experience negative population growth, especially in Central and Eastern Europe (mainly due to low fertility rates and emigration) and Southern Africa (due to the high number of HIV-related deaths). Japan’s population began decreasing in 2005[9] and some Western European countries are also expected to encounter negative population growth.”