Women on global political ascendancy

I have been on vacation in the United States of America (USA) in the last couple of days and have been sucked in by the elaborate process of presidential primary elections which culminated in the Republican National Convention, a week earlier and the Democratic National Convention last week. The two conventions produced billionaire Donald Trump and Former Secretary of State and former First Lady Hilary Rodham Clinton as their respective presidential candidates to stand for the November presidential elections.

The Democratic convention was particularly electrifying. I was completely blown by the testimony of former mayor of New York City, billionaire Michael Bloomberg who literally called Donald Trump a Con man. That was the most devastating blow and seemed to persuade me that Hilary Clinton may be on her way to making multiple histories. She already made one as the first woman to be nominated as a Presidential candidate by a major political party in the USA. She had bettered her 2008 effort, when she was beaten by Barack Obama and has risen above the efforts of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, two women who had made serious bids for presidential nominations in the recent times. Hilary Clinton has broken the political ceiling!

All over the world, women are breaking political ceilings and a very interesting trend seems to be emerging. Last year, one of the world’s most conservative countries when it comes to gender discrimination – Saudi Arabia – allowed women to vote for the first time in municipal elections. In the 2016 Forbes list of the world’s 100 most powerful women, 26 of them are political leaders. Indeed the top three are political leaders. The first is Angela Merkel, German chancellor, who controls the $3.3 trillion German GDP and the defacto leader of the European Union, influencing the $16.2T EU.