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Putting More Women on a Path to Political Power

Theresa May, the second woman to hold the position of prime minister in Britain.Credit...Facundo Arrizabalaga/European Pressphoto Agency

BERLIN — About five decades since the surge in modern feminism, it is unlikely that most women — in the United States, at least — would have anticipated the current political climate in which gender equality remains almost as elusive as ever and long-ago-won rights are under siege.

What is more, a man criticized by many for his treatment of women will be sworn in as president of the United States on Friday. And in 2016, a woman still could not be elected to the job.

After the gamut of emotions engendered by Hillary Clinton’s surprising loss to Donald J. Trump, women are once more confronting the big questions that have long enveloped the feminist quest. Put bluntly, is it sexism or the system that has so far prevented a woman from becoming president of the United States? And what lessons might be drawn from Europe, or places further afield, that could help an American woman get to the top one day?

As members of the global elite gather this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, gender issues in politics and beyond will be hotly debated.

If the fight for women’s rights has taught activists one thing, it is that simple questions have complex answers.

Melanne Verveer, executive director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security and former ambassador at large for global women’s issues under President Obama, said that “to just look at this election through the gender lens is not to understand it fully.”

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For women in modern Europe, the trail to the political top was blazed by Margaret Thatcher, the first woman elected as prime minister in Britain in 1979.Credit...Johnny Eggitt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Though many women saw Mrs. Clinton, a former senator and secretary of state, as the most qualified candidate, other women felt no tug to help one of their own shatter a glass ceiling and instead “reached a conclusion that they might be better off with a change,” Ms. Verveer said.

“I think people would like to think there has to be one good explanation,” said Shauna Lani Shames, an assistant professor of political science at Rutgers University-Camden in New Jersey. “But there is not. It’s many.” What she called the “deeply ingrained sexism” of a country fond of cowboy myths and tales of the Wild West is one. There are others.

For starters, look at how the United States chooses candidates.

“Selection is mostly about people self-recruiting,” Dr. Shames said. “You have to self-identify as a candidate, and often win a primary before the party will take note of you.” Just the expense and time away from family involved turn many women off, leaving a smaller pipeline.

Even the basic act of asking for money — essential to any political bid in the United States — hurts women more, she argued: “Women hate it more than men do. Men tend to be in social circles where they can raise more money.”

Mrs. Clinton was criticized last summer when her annual sojourn in the wealthy enclaves of the Hamptons became studded with fund-raisers. (Mr. Trump made his own round of fund-raisers there, to perhaps less attention.)

In Europe, women can work their way up the ladder of their party, which tends to have a distinct ideological identity and is often subsidized by government funds from which all legal parties can benefit.

In addition, Dr. Shames said, research has shown that the proportional representation that is a cornerstone of many European political systems is far more likely to get women elected to national legislatures.

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Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany is often called the world’s most powerful woman after 11 years in office.Credit...Tobias Schwarz/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Europeans have also been much readier to adopt quotas to bolster women’s part in politics. Americans steeped in individualism have been reluctant to legislate in this way. “The concept of quotas in the U.S., as you know, is antithetical to the American position and possibly the myth that holds that everyone pulls themselves up by their bootstraps,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers.

Of course, Europeans have not always proved able to use quotas to the full advantage for women. In France, for example, where law dictates that 40 percent of candidates be female, parties, particularly conservative ones, have often preferred to pay fines rather than find the mandated number of women.

Joanna Maycock is secretary general of the European Women’s Lobby, which brings together about 2,500 women’s groups from each of the 28 European Union nations, and from neighbors like Norway and aspiring members like Turkey and Serbia. She said she detected a change in attitudes since Mrs. Clinton’s defeat that starkly highlighted the quirks of the American system, in particular the Electoral College. (The college affirmed Mr. Trump’s ascension to the presidency despite his loss of the popular vote.)

Ms. Maycock cited a three-day workshop at the end of November that brought together about 25 American and European activists examining how to get more women into politics. “When we planned it, we thought we would be celebrating Hillary’s success,” she said. Instead, the meeting reflected “the shock of Trump.”

“A lot of the American participants were so horrified and shocked, there was a big difference,” she said, a readiness to explore other methods and reinforce the need to train women in public speaking, fund-raising and building networks. Ms. Walsh’s center at Rutgers runs nonpartisan campaign training in New Jersey and assists in such training in 17 other states. She reported a “dramatic increase” in women’s signing up.

“Women are seeking a way to have a voice,” Ms. Walsh said. “This election has made citizens — men and women — see things through the gender blend.” She added that women “can have an enormous impact on their lives, families, identities” and that “they can’t sit on the sidelines; they have to figure out a way to get engaged.”

In modern Europe, the trail to the top was blazed by the somewhat unlikely figure of Margaret Thatcher, who was the first woman elected as prime minister in Britain in 1979.

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Beata Szydlo, Poland’s prime minister, is among 27 percent of female lawmakers in the lower house of Parliament after gender quotas were introduced.Credit...Kacper Pempel/Reuters

(Theresa May is now the second, with the tough task of negotiating the country’s exit from the European Union.)

Mrs. Thatcher had no outright feminist agenda and stood accused of fomenting social hardship with her conservative policies and iron will, for instance, to break Britain’s trade unions.

Close to 40 years later, similar policies of austerity are associated with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, often called the world’s most powerful woman after 11 years in office. Her unwillingness to loosen Europe’s purse strings while Germany, Europe’s No. 1 economy, benefits substantially from the euro currency, makes her anything but a heroine in many feminist eyes.

“The obsession with austerity across Europe has been really bad,” Ms. Maycock said. It hits women doubly, she argued, cutting public service jobs often held by women and leaving them bereft of the infrastructure — care for children and seniors, for instance — that enables them to work.

Over the past decade, Ms. Maycock contended, austerity has been a big brake on women’s empowerment. “We’ve actually stopped progressing, more or less,” she said, citing a gender inequality index compiled by her group that showed 51.5 percent progress toward full equality 10 years ago, compared with 52.5 percent now.

In general, she said, European countries with quotas tend to show an effect once the female membership of legislatures passes one-third, she said. Over all in Europe, women account for about one-quarter of legislators, she said.

The range is large: In Poland, for instance, a female prime minister, Beata Szydlo, is among 27 percent of female lawmakers in the lower house of Parliament after the 2015 elections introduced a quota system. But the upper house, which has no such mechanism, is only 13 percent women.

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Beata Szydlo, Poland’s prime minister, is among 27 percent of female lawmakers in the lower house of Parliament after gender quotas were introduced.Credit...Kacper Pempel/Reuters

Norway, one of the first European countries to adopt quotas, has had two female prime ministers and a female defense minister, mandates 40 percent female board membership in business.

Ms. Maycock pointed to recently elected female mayors in Paris, Barcelona, Madrid and Rome as more examples of women’s getting power where it matters.

But in the United States, Dr. Shames said, women are far more likely to be city council members than mayors and state legislators than governors.

On both sides of the Atlantic, women still have important territory to take: While France has had a female defense minister, and Germany currently has one — Ursula von der Leyen, a married mother of seven — neither Britain nor the United States has entrusted defense to a woman.

American finance, too, has remained firmly in the hands of men, on Wall Street as at the Treasury.

And 2016 shocked many not just with Mrs. Clinton’s defeat — but with the triumph of Mr. Trump, despite accusations of misogyny, and with the murder of Jo Cox, a Labour Party legislator, who was stabbed by a man reportedly shouting “Britain First” days before the country voted to leave the European Union, which Ms. Cox opposed.

In democracies from Australia through the United States and Europe, the thin pipeline of women ready to step up to the top in politics (and business) is an added cause for concern.

In the United States, there are just five female governors right now, and 21 women in the Senate, Ms. Walsh said. “The bench is very small, and the potential pool of candidates is really very small,” she said, noting that most modern presidents (if not Mr. Trump) have been governors or senators first.

That makes it doubly significant that more women are expressing an interest in entering politics after Mrs. Clinton’s defeat, she said.

A correction was made on 
Jan. 16, 2017

An earlier version of this article misstated the number of women who have served as defense minister in France. The country has had one female defense minister, not none.

How we handle corrections

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