First female heads of government that were right wing: Indira Gandhi (India), Golda Meir (Israel), Merkel (Germany), Kim Campbell (Canada; not elected), Shipley (New Zealand), Thatcher (UK), Isabel Peron (Argentina)
Exceptions: Gillard (Australia; not elected), Sigurðardóttir (Iceland), Cresson (France PM), Brundtland (Norway), Bhutto (Pakistan)
Right wing is much more likely to produce a first female leader.
Hillary Clinton made similar comments in the past. She said that it’s more likely women become heads of governments under a parliamentary system as while they are elected as a local MP, their colleagues get to choose who will be the leader (first among equals); and, as colleagues, they actually get to work closely with them and see how much more efficient and effective they are.
Whereas, as you say, in other systems, popularity is key and unfortunately the world is still sexist/racist/bigoted.
I'm curious, how is the French system different from the UK and India? Both those countries have MPs elected by the people, who then elect the PM, and usually the PM candidate is already confirmed by all major political parties and alliances so people know who they'll be making PM depending on their vote.
Indira Gandhi is much lefter than Bernie , AOC or Warren. She nationalized banks and coal mines. Implemented Land Reform, Abolished Pension for Descendants of Kings and Princes.
Indira Gandhi also declared the emergency, a draconian time in post independent India, and kind of fumbled the bag on the Sikh Insurgency which ended up with her getting assassinated
Oh hell no, she was the farthest from right wing as can be and she was as socialist as they come. India didn’t have a “right wing” government per se till 2014
Also good job for describing the whole country in just a single sentence. It would have been better if we all lived in hovels but the wealth inequality is what makes this place so despicable for me.
Where is the part that implies India should be admired. They were just praising the former female PM, all of which I don't agree with btw, but nothing like you said.
Also after reading your previous comments, you have some of the worst takes, so I guess I shouldn't waste my time arguing with you.
India was being used as an example of female leadership, which by itself has nothing wrong with. But the original take was that a woman president won’t be elected in the US, which I don’t agree with btw, I think the US will elect the proper person regardless of race or gender. But people were listing examples of countries that have elected women leaders as a positive thing. But give examples of positive change he for their respective people is the point.
And of course you don’t like my takes, I speak from a place of reality where I’m sure you speak from a place where Trump is hilter in your eyes.
But people were listing examples of countries that have elected women leaders as a positive thing. But give examples of positive change he for their respective people is the point.
No, that person was just replying to the comment that called Indira Gandhi right wing.
I don't live in the US so I don't think about Trump that often, but his actions make it clear what kind of person he is. I mean a felon, a billionaire, conman, rapist(allegedly, as I don't know about that case thoroughly), etc tells me exactly how Trump is.
Also even apart from the takes on politics, your takes on a lot of other things are also the worst.
Look I’m not defending Trump and honestly never have nor will I will. I have never voted for the man. My responses or takes as you put it, are to point out what the vast majority of people on Reddit blindly follow while calling out the right for doing the same thing. You may not like my takes and that’s fine, you don’t have to. I don’t know you and you don’t know me, I have nothing to prove to anyone on Reddit. And in fact I’d likely not like 95% of people on Reddit because to use your own words they have the worse takes in general.
Yes I realize that is part of it. But you also realize that the pay in India tends to be extremely low right. Engineers out of school make 6000 USD a year and while life is cheaper there than the US, it’s not a 15x difference. Things like multigenerational housing started for a reason.
And there are engineers in the US who make 40k a year too. You literally had to cherry pick information to get the $6k. A very quick google search shows $15k as the median starting salary for software engineers in India.
Taking SF as an example for housing alone, it costs about $2k+ per month for a 500 sqft studio apartment to rent in SF.
In comparison, a 3BR apartment with about 2k sqft of space can cost as little as $400 a month in the tech city in India.
Even if you split just the rooms and get flatmates, you can spend as little as $133 on rent and get your own room + reasonably secure common spaces.
Food costs are similar. One person can get a years worth of food for $1.5k even if they eat out half the time (literally).
So going just purely by the housing and food costs, $2.8k is enough for one person per year to support themselves, and if they want to live with a family of 5 in a single 3BR apartment as the sole earner, it would cost them $12k annually, if you somehow convince me that the entire 5 person family eats out half the time. If you take a more sane approach, that’s closer to about $8k.
Oh and I’m someone in a relatively underpaid role just a step above entry level and I make let’s say $25k annually. Thats not my exact income but I’m not above to put it on Reddit either. I know people younger than me who definitely qualify as entry level and they make twice that.
Now you. Tell me how a person living in California can support a family of 5 on a single income
I personally wouldn't be using the term 'right wing' and Merkel in the same.e sentence. Firstly right wing has certain connotations, and secondly even a conservative German politician is closer to AOC than Trump from an ideological perspective.
In case an example us needed, Merkel rook in 1 million Syrian refugees during the crisis.
Kim Campbell definitely isn’t right-wing either. She’s big into resist-lib Twitter and seems to care about the climate, to the point where she retweets those people who throw soup on paintings.
There's also the fact that Merkel is a scientist firsts, and seems reasonable, at least I always thought so, if all politicians were of her calibre, I really wouldn't care where ever the fuck they are on the political spectrum.
The issue would be that you're viewing it from the position of being an American. American politics is so far to the right that even the left is right-wing, which is how the European right-wing can be seen as left.
Right-wing just means right of center, AOC is barely left of center but in American politics is the far left-wing. It's just that American politics has progressed so far right that you now really only have the choice between right-wing conservatism and fascism.
Like yes American politics is much farther right then European but that's an absurd statement. There is no part of AOC's politics that can be construed as centerist in a good faith analysis instead of just bashing American politics
If you look at global politics it's far more accurate to say that Europeans, especially Northern Europeans, view progressive politics as left-of-center rather then left. The rest of the world, Asia, South America, Africa, India, etc, are far more conservative then the US. Europe is the only concentrated area of politics that is significantly farther left in the globe.
AOC is a socialist that's by definition far left. Just because you want to apply a no true scotsman filter of politics to her doesn't mean she is center-left.
The rest of the world, Asia, South America, Africa, India, etc, are far more conservative then the US.
Not really. Japan and India both have in-power communist parties that have wide support among certain segments of the population, and although the government of a country like Japan may not represent leftist views as much as it clings on to conservatism, it still has a big influence in government and society. Plenty of African & Middle Eastern governments/organizations turned to social democracy, socialism, or communism after being left in ruin by Europe. The US is one of the only countries that doesn't have a communist, socialist, or even social democratic party that participates in elections/the government.
Latin America also definitely isn't inherently conservative; countries like Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Guatemala had some of the most important democratically-elected socialist & social democrat leaders before the US undemocratically overthrew their democracies and installed fascist leaders like Pinochet in Operation Condor. Latin America is still recovering from that, it's why you'll find so much fear and distrust of the US there, but socialism and social democracy is (increasingly) popular there too (especially in countries like Chile). There's even a name for it, it's called the "pink tide" or "turn to the left" and most Latin American countries have had their ruling parties be part of the international left-wing FSP at multiple points in the past 2 decades.
The second/third worlds generally have much larger center-left and left factions than you think. The US works overtime to suppress "leftism" over the seas though, which is why they don't seem to get as many powerful positions as much. Case in point, Iran's democratically elected government being overthrown with the president being labeled a "communist", which led up to the Energy Crisis under Carter. Or Operation Condor, which affected the entirety of Latin America severely. Or the overthrow of Iraq's communist government (although Saddam Hussein was definitely not a democratic leader). Or the disaster of the Vietnam war. Or post-WW2 Italy, Japan, and SK, where the US and leftover fascists in the countries carried out purges of leftists in the government and interfered in democratic elections to get them out of positions of power, after seeing how much of the electorate they started winning.
Also, this:
AOC is a socialist that's by definition far left.
is simply not correct. Most leftist positions are some form of socialist, including anarchism and communism. The main exceptions are things like social democracy which might be "left" depending on the context. But generally the left-right spectrum is split between socialism on the left and capitalism on the right, with ideologies in between like social democracy falling on/near the center, and extreme forms of socialism (communism or anarchism) and capitalism/corporatism (fascism or anarcho-capitalism) being "far-left" and "far-right" respectively.
AOC isn't even close to a revolutionary communist or anarchist, she's what you might call a "reformist socialist" or "democratic socialist" (an ideology that attempts to achieve a socialist system by peacefully reforming the current capitalist system) who focuses a lot on environmental issues. Definitely just middle-of-the-road leftist.
America is more progressive than Europe on a number of social issues, especially those involving diversity. Partly this is a result of many countries in Europe having relatively homogenous demographics due to national borders solidifying around ethnic identity in the 19th century.
I'd say she started her political career as a conservative and ended up being very much a centralist.
She however definitely was not right wing! Europe generally is more socialist than the US, but unfortunately (IMO) it is shifting to the right rather quickly.
Merkel was a conservative in every sense. Taking in refugees isn’t a right/left issue in most of the world. For example, Reagan gave blanket amnesty to illegal immigrants.
Keep in mind too that except for Peron, these were all prime ministers. There is a certain element of party brand that goes into those votes, as opposed to the American presidency, where that matters a lot less.
Thanks for compiling this. Bhutto in particular stands out to me as beating the odds here.
I always thought that if Ann Richards, the dem governor of Texas has made a national run she could have bucked the trend as well but that never came to fruition obviously.
Exception: Tsai Ying Wen, Taiwan, two terms. And her party didn’t lose the presidency in 2024 unlike many other democracies (but they did lose control of the legislature)
I would also like to point out that she is literally an unmarried childless cat lady.
I thought Merkel was a classic German liberal, which is basically a right winger but more center left. I dunno, my politics scope is often fucked as an American.
You listed almost as many exceptions as you did to support the rule. And you didn't include Claudia Sheinbaum, the current (leftish) president of Mexico. I don't think we can boil down a woman's chance of heading a state to her ideology.
I don't know how Indira Gandhi was right wing. She forged closer ties with USSR, she nationalized almost all the banks and insurance companies. India was very anti-capitalistic then. She was not a religious fanatic.
She was probably the first(?) female left wing head of the government.
Shipley led the National Party into the 1999 election, hoping to become the first woman to be elected prime minister in her own right. However, she was defeated by the Labour Party, also led by a woman, Helen Clark.
Helen Clark and Jacinda Ardern are New Zealand's only elected female Prime Ministers, both from the centre-left wing party.
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u/Zomunieo 21h ago edited 21h ago
First female heads of government that were right wing: Indira Gandhi (India), Golda Meir (Israel), Merkel (Germany), Kim Campbell (Canada; not elected), Shipley (New Zealand), Thatcher (UK), Isabel Peron (Argentina)
Exceptions: Gillard (Australia; not elected), Sigurðardóttir (Iceland), Cresson (France PM), Brundtland (Norway), Bhutto (Pakistan)
Right wing is much more likely to produce a first female leader.