When patterns break

Family photos are often taken when the world leaders get together at top level. Both in the League of Nations and the United Nations (UN), it was the same at every summit: one row after the other had only dark-clad white men. Gradually, they became more multicultural and colourful, some even wore Arab or African dress. However, North or South, East or West, men ruled the sovereign states of the world.

For many years, male dominance was practically total. The number of sovereign states increased and new nations established parliaments, cabinets, presidents and prime ministers, but male dominance continued. All the presidents and prime ministers were men. There were a few ruling queens, but their positions were inherited and their role, to a large extent, was ceremonial.

However, during the last decades of the 20th century, there was a change. Once in a while, a woman suddenly brightened up the family photo with gay colours. Around the turn of the century, there were several women, and by 2010, there were women presidents or prime ministers on practically all continents. They were not many, but, nevertheless, something had happened. Not only men were ruling the world's nation states.

In this book, I ask what happened when the established patterns of male political leadership broke and national top leaders were women instead of men. Why did some women get engaged in political activities that were usually considered a male domain? And how did they manage to climb all the way to the highest political positions, when very few men managed to do so and women had not done it before? Further, when top leaders were women and not men, did it make a difference for policies and decisions?

There were considerable differences economically, socially and culturally from one country to the other and from one period to the other after World War II, but, overall, national political institutions had or acquired sufficient common features to make international analyses and comparisons possible.

Dynamics of change

The book is placed within the field of gender studies. Gender studies can focus on women or men (or both). In this book, women are the main subject. In the political area, women are generally both under-represented and under-researched.