Another One Bites the Dust?

May 12, 2016 5:04 AM

Eleri Mai Harris posted this infographic yesterday showing the 12 elected female heads of state currently serving terms (cool, right?). But at the bottom she noted that less than two years ago, there were 22 (more info, dated January 2015, here). Now, less than 24 hours later, Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff has been impeached and suspended, and will face trial with the country's Senate (which has already voted 55 to 22 against her) to be permanently removed. (More detail in the recent Brazil Crisis post)
posted by oneswellfoop (16 comments total)

Park Geun-hye is still serving as President of South Korea, no?
posted by Panthalassa at 5:12 AM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sheikh Hasina Wajed is still Prime Minister of Bangladesh too.
posted by L.P. Hatecraft at 5:38 AM on May 12, 2016

President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is still in office.
posted by clavdivs at 5:48 AM on May 12, 2016

Nicola Sturgeon for Scotland? The leader of the Tories in Scotland is a woman as well and has brought the tories from a never ever in Scotland to the second place to the SNP.
posted by koolkat at 5:48 AM on May 12, 2016

Tsai Ing-wen is being inaugurated as president of Taiwan in about a week.
posted by cdefgfeadgagfe at 5:51 AM on May 12, 2016

I am semi-shocked that Eleri Mai Harris got the current count seriously wrong, and apologize for spreading the misinformation (and I'll have a word with Matt Bors, who's supposed to be editing these Nib features). On the other hand, I'm quite relieved that the count is higher and more encouraging than it seemed (still down from 2 years ago, but not nearly as much).
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:56 AM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Nicola Sturgeon for Scotland? The leader of the Tories in Scotland is a woman as well and has brought the tories from a never ever in Scotland to the second place to the SNP.

The Scottish Labour leader is Kezia Dugdale. Meaning all three major party leaders there are female. There's still a fair way to go in making the Scottish Parliament more broadly representative though.
posted by garius at 5:58 AM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Angela Merkel, Beata Szydło and Erna Solberg are heads of government. The heads of state in all their countries are male (the presidents of Germany and Poland, and the King of Norway).
posted by sobarel at 5:59 AM on May 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is still in office.

She was replaced by Mauricio Macri in December.
posted by pitrified at 6:05 AM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Also, uh, I think that maybe politicians almost certainly guilty of massive, multi-billion dollar corruption scandals should maybe be replaced independent of gender or sex. Just sayin'.
posted by Punkey at 6:06 AM on May 12, 2016 [8 favorites]

I grew up with Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister, and I didn't get that having a woman running a country was a big deal. I knew no better. I thought "Woman Prime Minister" was a description and not a differencing--and that the first word might stand for something more than her body. Knowing now how people talked and felt about her as a woman, I know that there were--and often still are--too many things wrapped up in that.

But I do feel that we're getting to a point globally where, yeah, it's still not the norm, but these leaders are now people running countries, and they happen to be women. They can be brilliant and inspiring, feminine or not, corrupt and self-serving, and yet they're standing for themselves and their party, and not the greater half of humanity which they happen to be lumped with. Okay, maybe we're not quite there yet, but I feel that I care more when women are missing than when a woman is present. The first is me, the other is just a person. (I hope that makes sense.)
posted by Emma May Smith at 6:16 AM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Also, uh, I think that maybe politicians almost certainly guilty of massive, multi-billion dollar corruption scandals should maybe be replaced independent of gender or sex. Just sayin'.

If this refers to the case in Brazil, well, Rousseff is one of the few politicians not being accused of corruption: the impeachment is about of illegally manipulating finances. The vice-president and now acting president on the other hand is.
posted by florzinha at 6:42 AM on May 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

Questions and Answers on Brazil’s Presidential Crisis (New York Times, May 12, 2016, by Vinod Sreeharshamay)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:01 AM on May 12, 2016

> Also, uh, I think that maybe politicians almost certainly guilty of massive, multi-billion dollar corruption scandals should maybe be replaced independent of gender or sex. Just sayin'.

Rousseff is NOT accused of any corruption whatsoever. The one thing she is accused of is moving money from one branch of the government to another to prevent collapse of services - something that has apparently been standard practice for over a decade.

Neither she nor any supporters or cronies profited by this to the slightest extent. From reading what happened, it seems as if the sort of thing that any rational leader would have done in a collapsing system.

Not sure whether I'm reacting worse to your faux-folksy manner, or the massive inaccuracy of your content - probably the latter.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 7:04 AM on May 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

Also, if we're going to get pedantic, Queen Elizabeth is head of 16 states.
posted by dudemanlives at 7:05 AM on May 12, 2016

"Elected Head of State" is a weird category to highlight. For instance, none of the Scottish politicians mentioned above is a head of state. The head of state of Scotland is a woman, but she's not elected.
posted by mr_roboto at 7:05 AM on May 12, 2016