FEMALE LEADERS IN PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY

By Akhmad Kusaeni

This is the paradox of Asia. Its cultures have long been typecast as patriarchal, but a presumptively sexist culture has been breeding some of the world’s most interesting female leaders –the Bhuttos, Gandhis, Soekarnoputris, Aquinos, Arroyos and Bandaranaikes.
Asia now fields more top-level female leaders more than the United States (Tom Plate, 2002). U.S. has 51 presidents already, but none of them are women. While American still awaits the apotheosis of its first female president, women rule in Asia.
Why so many women leaders in Asia, a region that has been described as an overtly patriarchal states? This short paper will try to answer the intriguing question.

Subordinate to men
In a patriarchal society, women are subordinate to men within the family and the States/Government. Women’s primary civic duties are performed in their roles as wives and mothers (Robinson, 2002). A gendered model of political authority with its origin in an imagined tradition of a patriarchal family is a cornerstone of the State ideology.
The gendered ideology –that putting the male power over women—has been institutionalized, internalized and imposed on the society in many government regulations or religious laws.
In Indonesia, for example, the conservative Muslim leaders have attempted to block the rise of women leaders, arguing that female leadership violates Islamic principles. The (gendered) cards would seem to have been heavily stacked against female leadership in Indonesia.
Yet patriarchy did not block women from heading anti-dictatorship struggles. Rather, gender stereotyping proved to be of political advantage. As women, the politicians in question were perceived to be weak making them appear less threatening to ambitious opposition rivals. They were the “mother” or “sister” of a suffering nation. They promised to cleanse the soiled public realm with private, familial virtue.
Megawati Sukarnoputri was the victim of openly gender-motivated attacks in Indonesia. After emerging as the most popular oppositionist from the Anti-Suharto movement, conservative Muslim politicians tried to undercut her presidential campaign, claiming Islam forbids the election of a female Leader:
Although her party received a plurality in the June 1999 parliamentary Polls, she lost a narrow vote for the presidency in the people’s Consultative Assembly. Her reluctance to cut political deals was one reason for her defeat. But she was clearly hampered in her efforts to win votes from a coalition of Muslim parties that united against her candidacy on the basis of gender.
Ironically, after Megawati succeeded to the presidency upon the legislature’s with a conservative Muslim leader who had earlier argued that women are not fit for high office. The new vice president, Hamzah Haz, who leads the country’s third largest party, the Muslim-based United Development party, moderated his views, saying a female president was preferable to an incompetent and corrupt man.
Viewed through traditional gender stereotypes, female leaders were not considered to be threatening to potential rivals, making it easier to unite opposition. Belonging to “weaker sex” and stressing non violence, female leaders represented what Vaclav Havel has called “the power of the powerless”. Suharto ungentlemanly attacks on Megawati made him heartless. Megawati leader received not only enthusiastic support in their own countries, but were also celebrated by the foreign press, despite their lack of policy specifics. Women could lead victorious democratic revolutions because thy occupied the moral high ground.
Less than two years after hard-line Islamic politicians blocked her from the presidency, claiming a woman could never govern the world’s most populous Muslim nation, Megawati Soekarnoputri has finally become Indonesia’s first female head of state on July 23, 2001.

Another reason for the rise of women leaders is that traditional stereotypes about their gender were not a hindrance, but proved to be to their political advantage. In the feminist literature the rarity of female leadership is commonly explained by the cultural construction of the role of women which is traditionally based in the family. But such a patriarchal ideology did not hinder women from achieving leading political positions in these Asian countries. Women leaders were often perceived as political. They were best suited to lead a moral struggle against male machiavellis. As the wives, widows, or daughters of male martyrs, these women rose to political power “over his dead body,” in Diane Kincaid’s ironic phrase. Murdered, imprisoned, or discredited Asian male politicians became political martyrs (al least for their supporters); their often-ambivalent political backgrounds were conveniently overlooked as “their” cause was taken up by their female successors. At the same time the experience and abilities of these women was left unquestioned (once in power, however, the competence of women leaders often became a question of great political importance, the answer to which was often given by men).