Liz Truss has become Britain’s most ephemeral head of government, and Georgia Meloni has just become the first far-right politician to be appointed Italy’s prime minister since the end of World War II. In the first case, the Conservative Party and, to a certain extent, the United Kingdom itself were left in chaos, in the second, Italy, as well as the European Union, as the first founding country, is entering an era of uncertainty. and among the so-called greats, the leadership has little enthusiasm for the European project.
You may have noticed that I used the masculine rule to refer to Truss in the context of British heads of government, and also to classify Meloni as an Italian politician after 1945, but I deliberately left out that Uma was already the third woman to reach prime minister. British minister (all conservatives!), and that the other became the first Italian prime minister in history, leaving Spain the only one of the great EU countries (including Poland and the UK before Brexit) that has never been ruled by a woman.
Without wishing to exaggerate, it is positive that in 2022 the gender of a ruler or ruler will no longer automatically be news, or at least a significant part of the news. And there are several reasons for this. When I started working at DN in 1992, there were already well-known leaders such as Shrimavo Bandaranaike from Sri Lanka, Indira Gandhi from India, Golda Meir from Israel, Benazir Bhutto from Pakistan or Tansu Chiller from Turkey, but in Western Europe they are often recognized as the most progressive. In most parts of the world, prime ministers until then could be counted on the fingers (and there are only a few left), with Britain’s Margaret Thatcher as a brilliant pioneer in 1979, and Norway’s Gro Harlem Brundtland. , Portuguese Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo and Frenchwoman Edith Cresson (both presidential candidates) and two presidents, Vigdis Finnbogadottir of Iceland and Mary Robinson of Ireland. In European accounts, of course, heads of state who were queens, such as Isabella II, were not included, even though their activities may have helped normalize the idea of having female leaders.
Thirty years later, counting on Meloni and not taking into account Trouss (or the possibility of his successor Penny Mordaunt, the Conservative leader candidate), across Europe I count about ten and a half prime ministers and presidents, from France’s Elisabeth Bourne . Hungarian Katalin Novak and Georgian Salome Zurabishvili, and almost all European regions are represented. Obviously, a closer look will reveal the real heavyweights of national politics alongside the more decorative figures, but this is also the case when we consider male leaders.
I have a son and a daughter, and I wish them both the same desire to be who they want to be, without the limitations inherited from other eras. And I know that Portugal (like most of Europe) is benefiting from the huge recent progress in the position of women, both in terms of laws and in terms of the evolution of society itself. But I can’t help but think that whether you agree with their respective ideologies or not, personalities like Thatcher and Merkel (and today’s Finn Sanna Marin) are an inspiration to any young European who dreams of having a voice in shaping the future of your country. . And it was they, the Europeans, who changed the situation, not least because, unlike what is happening in South Asia and other parts of the world, they did not claim to be the daughters or widows of politicians.
