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South Asia includes countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Maldives, etc.

As we all know, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh are countries of fundamental religion and male dominance where female population is placed at a low status than male, but they have produced woman leaders (Prime Minister) like Indira Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi (India), Sheikh Hasina, Khaleda Zia (Bangladesh), Benazir Bhutto (Pakistan).

Compared with South Asia, the US that is supposed to have equality of men and women up to now has produced none woman leaders, with Hilary Clinton nearly breaking the glass roof.

Why is so?

Brythan
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NanningYouth
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    Well, the fact that there are many South Asian countries and only one USA makes the comparation difficult. To put an example, if it was just a random issue and the probability of a female leader was 0.2, it would mean that probably there would always be a few SA countries with female leaders while in the USA it would happen only 1 out of each 5 times. Maybe you could compare it with the ratio of USA state governors, to get a bigger sample. Or, even better for the sampling, MPs in all those countries by sex. – SJuan76 Oct 06 '17 at 09:32
  • "equality of men and women" - Things are improving, but the gender gap still exists. – Denis de Bernardy Oct 06 '17 at 09:57
  • I can't speak for all Americans, but I wouldn't want to be ANY of the countries you list. Also, China doesn't have female leaders and they are dominating the world right now. Why doesn't China have any? As the USA loses power, I expect to see more female leaders and remember, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. – FalseHooHa Oct 06 '17 at 13:40
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    Was going to suggest it being a matter of not just any woman, but needing one that was more qualified than the other options, but, you know, Trump. – PoloHoleSet Oct 06 '17 at 16:02
  • The premise of the question makes no sense. There is no comparing. Isn't this an opinion question? I will translate: Why is America so unfair when even the 3rd world elevates women. – Frank Cedeno Oct 06 '17 at 19:46
  • @FalseHooHa There is a great female leader who has formal office. She is Soong Ching-ling, the second wife of Sun Yat-sen, also known as Madame Sun Yat-sen, who serves as Honorary Chairman of People's Republic of China. In China, Chairman means President, head of state. – NanningYouth Oct 07 '17 at 01:09
  • @FrankCedeno Your inference is very justifiable, but there must be hidden or evident behind such phenomena, and here we would like to find them out. By the way, Myanmar which borders India and Bangladesh also has a female leader if it could be counted as a South Asian nation geopolitically. – NanningYouth Oct 07 '17 at 01:16
  • "As we all know, India .... are countries of fundamental religion" - This is quite contrary to the fact that India is a secular country in letter and spirit. This statement is quite detrimental to the Indian image, and I ask you to re-frame the sentence. – SMJoe Oct 08 '17 at 14:46
  • @SMJoe I do not realize it is an offense to the country and I do not intend to make offense to anybody. As a non-native of English language, there might have been mistakes of words and expressions used, but what I mean is the country is full of religious influence, most of the times people are identified by their religion, as a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Muslim, or a Christian, as far as I know. – NanningYouth Oct 09 '17 at 01:59
  • @NanningYouth That's fine if it was unintentional... Cheers! :) – SMJoe Oct 09 '17 at 02:51
  • It seems like your seeking answers on to why Hillary lost. It was confusing because leader can include many positions, but I am assuming your talking about the primary power, in this case the President. Also the phrase "nearly breaking the glass roof" implies that there is some invisible force or barrier preventing women from achieving regardless of their qualification. This is untrue for the US as there are laws specifically preventing such a discrimination. To answer your question, she lost because she didn't win the votes. – Malaka Oct 11 '17 at 23:12
  • @Malaka The glass roof is actually a misspelling of glass ceiling. I know there are laws in the country to tell people what they can do, even you look to China, you will find there is a saying "women can hold up half the sky", but such is only laws or words written on papers. Whether it can be put into force depends on a lot of factors which cannot be controled by people. The main idea of my thread is it is an irony that US doesn't have women leaders, but those countries where such thing is thought to be impossible do have women leaders. – NanningYouth Oct 12 '17 at 13:17
  • @NanningYouth Yes I understood you meant to say glass roof, but I didn't want to come off as rude correcting it so I referred to it the same way. I believe User4012 has the best answer as in women got into leadership roles due to connections. I'm sure they have skills and knowledge in leadership but the main reason is "knowing the right people". Since our elections are democratic, any former president's wife would not be able to rise to power because voters are the major factor. While Hillary had that advantage because of Pres. Clinton, it didn't work as it might work in some other countries. – Malaka Oct 12 '17 at 23:21

2 Answers2

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First off, let's examine what is in common between all the leaders you listed.

Most of those female leaders in South Asia rose to power due in large part to political nepotism[1] - they were political and in most cases literal heirs to popular prior politicians. All quotes from Wikipedia:

  • Indira Gandhi belonged to the Nehru-Gandhi political family and was the daughter of India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

  • Sonia Gandhi ... is the widow of former Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi who belonged to the Nehru–Gandhi family.

  • Sheikh Hasina ... is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, first president of Bangladesh

  • Khaleda Zia was the First Lady of Bangladesh during the presidency of her husband Ziaur Rahman. She is the chairperson and leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) which was founded by Rahman in the late 1970s.

  • Bhutto was born in Karachi to a politically important, aristocratic family; her father, the PPP leader Zulfikar, was elected Prime Minister on a socialist platform in 1973.

    (to add to ironies of nepotism, in the reverse direction, Bhutto's husband Asif Ali Zardari rose to prominence as a consequence of being married to her and later served as the 11th President of Pakistan from 2008 to 2013). It works for both men and women. Another example is Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi's son.

[1] - side note: I use the term "nepotism" here but it's more nuanced than typical nepotism - it's more of a dynastic power inheritance thing than pure "daddy got me this post" regular nepotism which among other things often implies incompetence, while these female leaders presumably were competent enough to get their party's support. I simply can't think of a better more fitting term at the moment.

This political nepotism has not been a major[2] feature of US politics until much later in 20th century (but has since risen its head with a veneheance starting with Kenneddy clan and going on to Bushes and Clintons. Mitt Romney was also a son of a powerful politician. As you can see with Hillary Clinton, such nepotism almost netted USA a female President. I wouldn't have been surprised, had GHWB had a daughter, to see that daughter rising high in Republican party. There's already a talk about getting Chelsea Clinton a congress seat - I will leave it to the reader to research what special qualities she possesses aside from who the parents are.

[2] - yes, I'm aware of John Quincy Adams. From my basic knowledge, he likely would have risen just as high even if his father wasn't a President before

As to why such a difference between US and the SEA countries; please note that in US there's no Prime Minister, so I would assume this is likely a factor.

PM doesn't get elected as a person but rather, wins the post because their party wins the elections. As such, if nepotism got you to lead a major party under parlamentary system (like most SEA countries), you automatically become the PM; you do not need to win an election as an individual politician.

Whereas, in USA, you don't necessarily get to be elected President just because your party is on top - Presidential elections are not about who has majority in Congress (heck, much of the time, President is not from the Majority-congress party); and thus; while being a personal and political heir of a personal politician doesn't hurt, it does not guarantee election victory for either gender; in either primaries (Jeb Bush) or general election (Hillary Clinton).

One thing worth noting - if you go one step down, US has female governors and congresscritters (and at least 2 recent VP candidates, Ferraro and Palin) who did NOT get elected/selected largely due to family influence.

user4012
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    I'm not very happy with the assumption that being a daughter/wife/husband of a (former) politician alone is already proof for nepotism (apart from the fact that coming from a high social class benefits you in various ways). It may be an indication, but for nepotism you need more than that. – Thern Oct 06 '17 at 11:55
  • @Nebr - see the edit please – user4012 Oct 06 '17 at 12:55
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    Wow. As Chelsea Clinton has a PhD in International Relations from Oxford University, I'd say that by itself makes her about 100x more qualified than the current occupant of our White House. -1 for a very biased answer. – BradC Oct 06 '17 at 13:18
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    I also think this answer is profoundly historically ignorant. Look at the John Quincy Adams our 6th President, and son of John Adams, our 2nd President. Lots of powerful political families down through the entire history of the US, not just in your own lifetime. – BradC Oct 06 '17 at 13:27
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    @BradC What has she done with that PhD, aside from managing the family charity and a hollow job with NBC? Logical fallacy for appealing to the authority of her PhD. – Drunk Cynic Oct 06 '17 at 14:48
  • @DrunkCynic Given that Trump was a businessman, not a career politician, before becoming president, the comparison seems fair. (Of course, a PhD is mainly just to show you can do research; most academics still have to do multiple postdocs, publish lots more papers, etc. before even being considered for faculty positions and the like.) – JAB Oct 06 '17 at 14:54
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    @JAB Not arguing for Trump; there is little merit to do so. Just against Chelsea Clinton. – Drunk Cynic Oct 06 '17 at 14:57
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    @DrunkCynic - not to mention a PhD in a soft subject like that isn't really proof of much other than ability to regurgitate what your teachers want to hear. It's not like any "research" in "International Relations" can be done in a falsifiable way to actually test between something useful vs not. – user4012 Oct 06 '17 at 17:03
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    @BradC: Would she have gotten into a graduate program at Oxford if she was someone else's child? – jamesqf Oct 06 '17 at 18:11
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    Amazing how much crap Chelsea gets for simply being the daughter of Bill and HIllary, when she's announced no intention to get into politics. And of course, I'm told this has absolutely nothing to do with sexism!Yeah, right. This whole comment thread is a massive derail. – BradC Oct 06 '17 at 18:22
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    @BradC the Bush family gets as much criticizm for pushing through their male descendants. – JonathanReez Oct 06 '17 at 18:47
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    @BradC Chelsea Clinton's incompetence is not due to her gender or her parentage. It is due to the latter that her incompetence is so evident. All the privileges, yet none of the outcome. – Drunk Cynic Oct 07 '17 at 00:02
  • Living in an European country with a parliamentary system, I can tell you that even there is no direct election of president of government, voters in elections for members of parliament care a lot more for who is the candidate to president than for who are the candidates to members of parliament in their constituency. – Pere Jun 25 '20 at 11:56
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It should be noted that it is not completely uncommon even in very patriarchalic cultures that women can sometime rise to power, especially if the system is undemocratic. In monarchies, this happened from time to time, think of Queen Elizabeth I., Queen Victoria, or Catherine The Great.

So women that rise to power are not a suitable gauge for gender equality, if you only focus on single events. There may be a multitude of reasons why a specific woman could have acquired so much power, making it a notable exception, but not more.

The more interesting part is the question why the USA still never had a female president. There may be many reasons; that voters still are reluctant to vote for a woman, even in the presence of a candidate like Donald Trump; that you need large amounts of money for becoming president and women on average own less money than men; that president is a male role model, so far more men want to become president than women; or that it is just a coincidence (a few voters more for Hillary Clinton, and we wouldn't have this discussion now). But how could one prove this? From here on, it seems to be largely opinion-based, and I would like to refrain from speculations. The sample size is simply too small to really draw a solid conclusion from it.

Thern
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  • I think part of the answer is that women who rise to positions (e.g. senators & governors) where they might be considered viable candidates for President generally have taken political positions that are popular enough in their state, but which make them unlikely to be elected. Hillary Clinton is an obvious case, but one could include names like Diane Feinstein, Elizabeth Warren, &c. – jamesqf Oct 07 '17 at 04:48
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    @jamesqf -- Men who rise to be senators and governors also take political positions that are more popular in their state than nationally. Are women more likely to be de facto disqualified by this phenomenon than men? – Jasper Jun 22 '19 at 16:36