🏆 Presenting: The #WomenLead Awards
Celebrating five years of #WomenLead with our special awards
Hello dear friends,
Guess what, we’re five!
Yes, today marks five years since #WomenLead’s first edition went out. The five-year birthday is always special, and I am thrilled to be celebrating a milestone I had not even dreamt of when I started this publication all those moons ago. It is truly surreal.
Thank you, dear readers, subscribers, and supporters for joining the #WomenLead community: it has survived and thrived only because of you all – this wonderful, kind and supportive tribe who care for a more equal and representative politics and public life.
#WomenLead’s readers are spread across 105 countries around the globe – a fact that makes me pinch myself every other day in sheer disbelief, but also makes it a little difficult for me to share a piece of cake with all of you. If you’d like to celebrate this milestone, please treat yourself to your favourite dish today. 🎂😊
I’ve often used #WomenLead’s birthdays to reflect on our journey and learnings. But five is super special. And I don’t want to get all #OscarSpeechEmo. So, to mark this anniversary, I bring you the #WomenLead awards! Five (very special!) categories, with winners picked from all those eye-rolling, jaw-dropping, face-palm moments that we have chronicled across our 160+ editions.
Here we go:
🏆 The “In Outlandish Land” Award
Winner: Libero Quotidiano Daily, a newspaper from Italy (December 2023)
The year 2022 gave Italy its first woman Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni. She was bestowed a special honour the very next year. That of “Uomo Dell’Anno”, or “The Man of the Year” by this Italian newspaper.
Meloni was chosen for this “honour” as she had “won the ‘war of the sexes’ in Italy”, argued the newspaper. It also said that Meloni had not just broken the glass ceiling, in fact she had “dissolved it”!
Notable mention: Then CNN journalist Don Lemon (February 2023)
When Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and US ambassador to the United Nations, announced her candidacy for the American presidential race, this journalist claimed that Haley was not “in her prime” during an episode of CNN’s This Morning.
When asked by his colleagues to explain what being in the prime meant, Lemon explained that women are in their prime only when they are in their 20s, 30s, or even 40s (so kind and so thoughtful!), but not after that. And how does Mr. Lemon know this “fact”? Well, Google says so, according to him! Such worldly wisdom does deserve a notable mention, does it not? Lemon later apologised for his remarks.
🏆 The “Decimal Dilemma” Award
Winner: Samoa (Apr-Jul 2021)
In 2021, this small Pacific island nation witnessed a rather dramatic election that led to a constitutional crisis… all over the quota for women in parliament. It’s always fun to see people fight over women’s quotas, but it didn’t come without its share of confusion and uncertainty.
Fiame Naomi Mata'afa was vying to be Samoa’s first woman Prime Minister, against long-time incumbent Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi. Out of the 51 MP seats, 25 each went to both their parties. The 51st winner, an independent, later joined Mata’afa’s party, bringing the tally to 26-25 in her favour. Easy-peasy?
Well, the final answer didn’t come for three months.
Enter: a 2013 law mandating a 10 percent quota for women, stating that this meant at least five women were needed (though then the parliament had 49 seats). A lower tally would require the losing women candidates with the highest votes to be appointed to additional seats to ensure the minimum requirement of five. When a 2019 law raised the number of total seats to 51, it didn’t clarify whether the minimum quota for women would now be six or remain at five (because what exactly is 10 percent of 51?).
Now, the 2021 polls gave Samoa five women MPs (9.8 percent of 51). The electoral officials first said the quota was of five women and had been met, but later decided the target was 10 percent, and to meet it, one extra seat would need to be created. Lo and behold, who was the new woman MP? From the incumbent’s party.
This would take the tally to 26-26, and the head of state called for a snap election. But a deadline was looming for the parliament to sit. When Mata’afa and her lawmakers went to take oath, they found the parliament locked for them, and took oath outside.
After months of political drama and court interventions, Mata’afa’s party was declared to have won the election and she became the Prime Minister.
This obsession with precision (10 percent means 10, not 9.8!) deserves our special decimal dilemmas award. Will make many mathematicians proud, so what if it meant using an ambiguous clause meant to improve women’s representation to actually block the country’s first female PM from taking charge smoothly.
Notable mention: Election Commission of Indonesia (April 2023)
Looks like a love for precision with decimal places spans oceans and continents.
Indonesia’s electoral law requires a minimum of 30 percent women candidates in each electoral district. Now as in Samoa’s case, “30 percent” can sometimes translate to non-whole numbers (for example, in a district with nine candidates, 30 percent would be 2.7). In such scenarios, the electoral commission had a policy to round the figure upwards to ensure the minimum 30 percent level (this would make it three women in our example of nine candidates).
But in 2023, a year ahead of legislative elections, it decided to change this rule to be more precise i.e. to round off the decimal numbers to the closest whole number, which could be downwards in certain cases (e.g. for eight candidates, the 30 percent figure is 2.4, which is closer to 2 than to 3, resulting in just 25 percent women).
Not their fault – maths is not everybody’s cup of tea. But thankfully, enough mathematical nerds turned up to show the problem in this. And after concerns were raised that this could lower the number of women, it went back to its original policy. The attempt may not have worked, but this attempt to be more precise with rounding-off does deserve a notable mention, doesn’t it?
🏆 The “Linguistic Hurdles” Award
Winner: Jordan’s MPs (December 2021)
In December 2021, Jordan’s parliament was discussing an amendment to include the term “female Jordanians” in its constitution. Thus far, Chapter 2 of the country’s Constitution was related to “The Rights and Duties of Jordanians”. The word “Jordanian” was used in Arabic in its default masculine form to refer to everyone. A royal committee tasked with providing insights to modernize political life and develop legislation in the kingdom recommended changing this to “The Rights and Duties of Jordanian Men and Women” to explicitly recognize women’s rights and to increase their political participation.
But if you thought this was simple and straightforward, you were wrong. Chaos broke out in parliament. Some said it was against morality and motherhood, some claimed this would interfere with personal laws, others thought the government was acting under pressure from international actors and donors.
There was pushing and pulling and a lot of unparliamentary behaviour. The amendment eventually did pass, but so much brouhaha over such a small change must be applauded.
Notable mention: Christine Lambrecht of Germany (October 2020)
Lambrecht, Germany’s minister of justice and consumer protection, decided to use feminine nouns instead of the default masculine ones in a draft legislation on bankruptcy. (Common nouns in German have masculine, feminine and neutral gender forms, and legal texts normally use the default masculine to refer to all people.) Obviously, it wasn’t welcome. Some argued it would only apply to women, others thought it was a gimmick. The bill was eventually withdrawn and resubmitted with “conventional” wording.
🏆 The “Audacity 101” Award
Winner: Political husbands from India (March 2022)
We’ve written about this often – India’s local politics, despite enabling high participation of women, has often been notorious for one troubling phenomenon: rule by proxy. When seats are reserved for women, men put forth names of their female relatives for elections, but continue to wield power in public life when the women win. There have been multiple efforts to check this malpractice, but you’ve got to admire the audacity of some men who like to climb to power via this route.
In March 2022, The Times of India reported about how some such husbands and other relatives of elected women leaders from the city of Chennai went on to defend their “right” to wield such power. One such man even wondered what was wrong with him carrying out the duties, arguing “I got the councillor seat for my wife”. If this does not deserve the Audacity 101 award, then what does?
Notable mention: French politician with a preference for pleasant-ness (May 2022)
When Elisabeth Borne was appointed France’s Prime Minister in the summer of 2022, the outgoing PM, Jean Castex, addressed her as "première ministre", the feminine form of the title in French (instead of “premier ministre”, the normal masculine form). Eric Zemmour, a far-right politician, refused to use the term, because for him, “French should above all sound pleasant to the ear", the BBC reported.
🏆 The “Political Red Carpet” Award
WINNER: #VermelhoemBelem, Portugal (January 2021)
In the run-up to the presidential polls in Portugal in January 2021, one of the candidates, André Ventura, attacked another, Marisa Matias, for the choice of her lipstick. (Yes, look at the issues and priorities!). Ventura said Matias was “not doing very well in terms of image, performance,” and that she painted her lips “as if it were a joke.”
In response to this, Matias tweeted a picture of her with the hashtag #VermelhoemBelem which translates to “Red in Belem” (Belém Palace is the Presidential House in Portugal). In a show of solidarity, Ana Gomes, the other female candidate (and Matias’ competitor), put out a ten-second video, in which she says nothing but applies red lipstick very happily. The hashtag soon started trending across the country, with many, including men, sharing pictures and videos wearing red lipstick to protest the disgraceful misogyny. For the solidarity, this one takes the winner’s place in this category.
Notable mention: Polish Opposition MPs (August 2020)
Opposition MPs in Poland coordinated their dresses to resemble a rainbow at the swearing-in ceremony of President Andrzej Duda to express solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community. In his presidential campaign, Duda had claimed that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people were “not people, it’s an ideology.” He had also criticized marriage equality and vowed that he would ban same-sex couples from adopting children. The creative and collaborative way to make a point sure deserves a notable mention!
And with that we come to the end of this awards season. I hope you’ll agree with the winners, but hey, even better if you don’t, and have suggestions for more deserving characters! As edition after edition of #WomenLead has shown, there is no dearth of these at all. So don’t hold back, and send them our way.
Before we sign off, thank you once again for reading and supporting this publication all these years. We hope we’ll continue to have your support, love and feedback for many more years to come.
We’ll see you soon with our next monthly wrap up!
Disclaimer: #WomenLead is a non-partisan newsletter produced in a personal capacity, and does not reflect any institutional affiliation/opinion. In case of any questions, please drop in a message at womenlead.project@gmail.com.
What a collection of crazy happenings across the world! This is why I come here for this content. Thanks Akshi, and congratulations on hitting five years!
What a collection of crazy happenings across the world! This is why I come here for this content. Thanks Akshi, and congratulations on hitting five years!