Policy Solutions for Inclusive Democracy

Many authoritarians may not be inherently misogynistic, but they see this as a brilliant tactical move to sideline half of the competition . Around the world, anti Democratic forces are taking aim at women leaders . But women leaders are fighting back. They're at the forefront of countering Russian hybrid warfare and crafting strategies to fend off possible Chinese aggression while working to forge inclusive domestic policies at home. Do women leaders face unique challenges? Why do authoritarian movements frequently seek to diminish the role of women in politics? And what lessons are women leaders providing amid the current global crisis of democracy . From the Council on Foreign Relations, welcome to the President's Inbox. I'm Jim Lindsey. Today, I'm joined by Linda Robinson, senior fellow for women in Foreign Policy here at the Council , and author of the new book Women In Power , Fighting For Democracy in an Age of Authoritarianism . Linda, thank you very much for joining me. Congratulations on the publication of Women In Power. Thank you very much, Jim. I'm so happy to be with you on the President's Invice . Well, I see you've mastered the first art of book sales, which is always to hold it up when the book is mentioned. Before we turn to our conversation, L y Ind wante to. tell our listeners how they can get a free copy of Women Empower to do so . They should go to cfr dot org forward leaning slash giveaway where they can read the terms and conditions in register of their entry. The registration for the giveaway will remain open for two weeks after this episode goes live . After that we will select ten names at random to receive a free copy of Women in Power and you can find the giveaway link in this episode's show notes. With those logistics out of the way lender , let's begin . You argue we are currently witnessing a tandem crisis of democracy in women's leadership. What do you mean by that ? So I see both the Democratic back sliding, which has been very well advertised . You hear it each year in reports like Freedom House, which says twenty we're in the twentieth year of democratic decline worldwide . You often don't read though about women's political representation, which has entered a stall at this time . So I looked at what was happening both with democratic erosion generally, how it's affecting women, but also the rollback of women's rights and the opportunity for them to be even more represented than they had been over past decades. And so what have you found? Well, I have found that there are really three trends that are either new or much more impactful for women. And that is advent of an authoritarianism mostly from the right wing that really is preaching that women should be in the home , having families, and not having a public career, political career. And that's become quite pronounced in many countries, I would say, including our own . There's also been a normalization of violent misogyny, the rhetoric and actual threats and violence has crept into our mainstream discourse and politics. And then the last one is the effects of digital technology and very significantly recently artificial intelligence, which has spawned a rash of deep fake , often pornographic or sexualized. And these are really delegitimizing for women in politics. And it's very prevalent . And those are happening not just because users wish to create them, but often as with GROC recently, it just auto generates and auto posts these. Auto posts? Yes, Grock has its own X feed and it can promote these created videos and images on its own feed. Do we know why it's self creat ing these videos ? Well, it's a very popular item on the internet and we know that the digital technologies are really designed to create a stickiness or user engagement and maintain it, but also to propagate it to others who haven't even requested that material . But is it reflecting what its customers are already posting? In some cases, yes, but you can often have adjacent the algorithms will often serve it up to new people who've never requested that. And it's in the design of these algorithms. So as you look at these three trends , what impact is it actually having on the number or percentage of women who are serving in public office, particularly at senior political levels? Yes. And I did focus on senior levels, but the most robust data is gathered on women parliamentarians in the legislature. So after decades of incremental but steady gains , the numbers of women serving in parliaments have entered a stall . And right now worldwide, there are twenty seven percent of women in the world's legislatures. And when you consider fifty percent , that's far certainly from parody. twenty two percent of the world's cabinet ministers and only seven and a half percent of women presidents and prime ministers . So we're at a low level and because of these trends, women are, according to one study by the interparamentary union, women are actually leaving before their term is out at a rate of one out of every six . So they're just finding these, as I call them, headwinds to be very ferocious and discouraging for them. And candidacy data is a little spottier, but there are a lot of anecdotal reports that women, young women, especially are declining to really consider entering the political ring , which all of which is bad news if you consider equality and equal representation be part of a healthy democracy? Well, let me draw you out on that because I think the question often comes up in these conversations is does it matter if political leaders are women or not? Do women govern differently ? Do they have a different take? Do they put different issues on the table? What is your sense of how that question gets answered? Yes, well, there are two basic answers. One is a fairness issue when you're talking about half of the population , more equal representation is considered by many to be fair and women certainly fought for that in the third wave of democratizations which was when the nineteen seventies is when it began and you had increasing representation and governments committing to do so through various measures , adoption of quotas, other measures to support women who want ed to get into the ring . But there's also a practical matter that's been documented very well by the CFR program or women in Foreign Policy program , that you have a tendency among women to be more attentive to health, education and welfare issues . You can see it in the legislation that's passed, the funding that's passed. And increasingly, there's also new research that shows women tend to be more concerned about climate change and some of the other systemic reforms . And that's I think all in the column of benefits of having women in. But I also focused on how women deal with national security and foreign policy issues because that is , of course , for women at senior levels, presidents and prime ministers , they have to be equally good at that as men to be elect . And just be clear, you're not arguing that women are uniquely democratic in their governing style because I can certainly come up with a long list of women who did get to the top of the ladder and did not govern as Democrats small D. Thank you. Absolutely. And the caveats are important, but just as we wouldn't argue that all men are good leaders, there's no argument here that women are ipso facto, good or better leaders , and they're certainly not all Democrats. And Sheikh Khasina of Bangladesh was the longest serving authoritarian leader until she was thrown out in a popular and youthful uprising. Her main opponent was actually a woman whom she put in jail. So women are certainly capable and have been authoritarians as well . But I think there is an important argument to be made that women have every right and every competence. They've thoroughly closed the education gap . There is competence there that isn't being tapped. So I also would make the argument that if you exclude or discourage half of the talent pool, you're just not getting fully competitive elections to bring in the best candidates. Let me ask you a question from a different perspective, and that is a lot of authoritarian governments, particularly thinking back in the sixties, seventies and eighties, communist governments, argued that they did much more for women empowering women than Democratic governments did. Is that a fair critique? Well, there were certain formal provisions adopted and there were women's representation and we should also say numerical representation is just the beginning of power and influence. It matters what substantively they do and can do. And there are certainly authoritarian governments that have boosted their numbers and what 's called gender washing by having women in positions that aren't necessarily in power. Yeah, and I will not look at China, which is interesting in many ways, it has empowered women, but when you look at senior ranks of the Chinese Communist Party , you have to look really hard to find women. And in fact, the Politburo for the first time has zero women under Presidency Z , so it's actually been gone from tokenism to nothing. So you focused a lot of attention on the role of authoritarian governments or right wing movements in trying to roll back the accomplish ments of women in sort of gaining political power and particularly senior positions in governments the world . Help me understand why it is that rolling back women's rights is so important and so central to either the right wing or authoritarian movements you see around the world. Well, there is a very strong correlation in the research between authoritarian tendencies and what they call social dominance orientation. So a real predilection to marginalizing women or not treating them as equals a misogynistic outlook on life, if you will. You could call it traditionalism, but in this day and age, I think it's fair to say it's very exclusionary . The second point is that many authoritarians may not be inherently misogynistic, but they see this as a brilliant tactical move to sideline half of the competition . So by keeping limited understand that, Linda, why is playing the misogyny card and we've seen it across democratic countries so effective? Why is it so powerful? Well, there is in fact, , according to the Human Values Survey, a good deal of latent prejudice remaining against women and women in politics in particular . And what is interesting when you look at the data, while men are more prejudiced or more doubtful that women can or should be in the public and political sphere, women share that as well. They're less prejudiced, but they are. So it's an effective way of sidelining women so they don't compete for power that their voices are lessened. Do we have a sense of why it is these attitudes exist? I mean, particularly referring to the studies that show that women can be misogynistic, which seems counterintuitive. Yes, well I'll just give you one data point and there it is not an area of my research in particular, but white women voted for President Trump , the plurality of them voted for President Trump, and even more of them voted for President Trump in his second election. And he displays a lot of behaviors that would turn off many women. So I think it's very interesting they're identifying perhaps not just from their gender , but from their religion, from their race, from concern s about migration, illegal immigration, crime, etc . So I think and historically we've seen women often adopt very traditional attitudes , the forefront of the campaign against the equal rights amendment, which still hasn't been incorporated in our Constitution. Phyllis Schafley and Anita Bryant were the poster women for that movement. Well, that's an interesting point because what I notice that in some countries the nationalist parties nationalist movements are headed not by men, but by women . You have the currentim Perister Min of Italy, Georgi Meloni , who led a far right nationalist party . In Germany, the alternative future of Deutschland was led by Alice Weddell . In France, we have the national rally headed by Marine Le Pen . Help me understand that. Because where you're laying out, it seems contradictory in a way. Yes, but I think this is a good example of the phenomenon I just mentioned that these women are identifying more as white and Christian and they see an invasion of immigration of other religions and Geor Mgaliaoney has made it quite clear that she sees herself as a defender of European white Christian civilization. But I will say and we might talk about her more later, but she's undergone an evolution from some of her earlier positions. And just on the woman front, she was attacked by deep fake porn and went to court over it, and she's been very vociferous and vocal about the need to strengthen some of the guardrails and ensure that women aren't attacked in this fashion. Now that's interesting because you've pointed out a number of women have been very successful in gaining entry into politics , but then opted to leave politics because of these social media assaults being trolled worrying about their security security of their family . But you have someone like Georgia Maloney who didn't quit the playing field, but battles it. Do you have a sense of why that is? Why women leave? I understand why women leave. I guess maybe the question is why do they st?ay Why do they stay? Is there something that you're in a different space if you are leading a right wing party than if you're leading a center or left or center party? Well , there isn't in these cases we're talking about , there's not a cross country study. I do know the volume, the vitriol, the violence in the case of Jacinda Ardern was just phenomenal. Tell me a little bit about this. I mean, it is stunning to read what she experienced. Yes, so Jessicinda Arden was actually the third woman who served as Prime Minister of New Zealand and she was at the time the youngest female leader in the world . And she had a very successful first run the prime minister . She dealt with major crises COVID, the Christchurch mass acre , a horrible natural disaster . But then she began because she had very strict COVID policies in part to protect their Maori Indigenous population and a real campaign began against her. And there was actually a study university study done that showed she received ninety percent of the online abuse and violence and threats. Death threats tripled against her in the final two years of her term. So it was and she had a young child, a daughter. She was very concerned. She was being chased. She was really , she'd look out her government window and see a noose strung over a tree . So it was really a very threatening environment and she did decide to resign, but I will say she's maintained a high international profile and continues her counter extremism campaign . And I think she's she chose and I think it's the right of women to decide when they've had enough , but she and some other younger women who stepped back criticizing what they were facing could come back again for another day. Jascendar Dairen is now the most popular figure in New Zealand politics. She's at the top of the polls. But the interesting thing is maybe the sad thing is she is not the only woman politician, women leader in this situation . You know, you've talked about is it Sana Marin , former Prime Minister of Finland , who finally had enough and decided she wasn't going to pursue her political career . I just wonder sort of looking at that what do you think the consequences might be of women leaving . Does it do you think it's going to, in essence , get societies to face up to the misogyny, or does it in some way ratify it? Well, Sana is someone who's still very much on the scene as well, and she's just written a memoir and a documentary was done about her term in office and I think what was obscured by a lot of the gendered abuse . And there was the viral video of her danc ing at a private party, which was considered a scandal, even though it was a completely innocuous thing. She and her women, fellow cabinet members, were attacked at ten times the rate of her male cabinet members . And so there was that evidence of the abuse, but it obscures her real achievement, a prime of which was bringing Finland into NATO following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and she's continued to be one of the foremost proponents not only of aid to Ukraine, but very importantly this idea of Europe standing up and getting an integrated defense and Finland and Sweden are major parts of that . So it's a loss for the governing world that she stepped back . But she is, again, she's very young. She's a part of the advisory group that Tony Bl air has founded . She's very much still on the world stage, and I have a feeling she will be back, but she's also speaking around the world about her experience as a leader. And when she chose to step down , she went on stage to the tunes of Aretha Franklin's respect . And she's been very vocal in pushing back. And part of changing norms is people being willing to push back and call it out because it used to be that women would try to pretend it wasn't happening. It's so vicious and viral now that I think the first step is to call it out. Second to look at some systemic fixes , most of which I would say is in the realm product safety responsibility for the tech companies, but also social norms and the evidence of these women governing well and in very existential challenges Russia, China, climate change. They're doing an excellent job. And I think that track record, that's what motivated me to really go into depth in studying their policies . That evidence that they do just as well as men, I think can help . In some cases, they've done better and better, at least as well, then. So one of the things I'm struck by is that there clearly is a double standard when we talk about men who are leaders versus women who are leaders. And I saw the video of Sana Marin , which caused controversy in Finland. I don't necessarily understand the cultural context in which it emerged, but it seemed relatively harmless . So how is it that women are dealing with what at least to me seems to be a double standard because I can't imagine that a video of a male prime minister dancing would have caused great outrage. Yes, I think that that is what's rem arkable. And women around the world posted videos of themselves dancing in solidarity with Sanna , but you're quite right to point out. And I think it's very helpful when someone like you says, we have to recognize this is a double standard . I think there's even in a country like Finland, which rates very high in the gender equality indices , it's surprising that that surfaced. But I think it's important to note it's not a majority of the population in many countries. There was a right wing populist party from which a lot of this was emanating, a right wing populist party across the channel in Estonia, which is very close and they have a lot of ties . So this is also kind of a transnational movement of these right wing parties movements , the violent misogynists that live online in a space called the Manosphere . And it's all really this toxic stew, and I think we should understand. We've had backlash periods before , but it's really a vicious place now. And I think people who care about democracy should be joining in this fight so it's not just a women's fight alone. On that point, Linda, do we know to what extent these social media campaigns against women leaders, women politicians are homegrown versus being stoked by authoritarian governments. There's no secret that the Russians and the Chinese and the Iranians and who knows whom else have been trying to meddle in politics in democratic countries sowing division. Do we have any real sense ? Yes, so there have been some good forensics on cases to bring that to light. And you're right, it's definitely both homegrown but also coming from abroad and often as part of a hybrid warfare campaign . And a couple of examples, Xai In Wen, the first woman to be president of Taiwan, two term president, landslide elections . The Chinese created a video a digital book that basically portrayed her as a prostitute. And this is a very professorial , you know, accomplished woman and it was just the most debasing kind of propaganda that was designed to be fed out into social media platforms. And they were able to trace that back. And she did face gendered abuse in her campaigns at home, but it was a very systematic part of what China has been leveling at Taiwan, at the island. In the case of Moldova in Europe on the border with Ukraine, Maya Sandu faced an incredible campaign of gendered abuse that came from Russia, which has been trying to control the former Soviet Republic through an intens hybrid warfare campaign, and they were able to document both Russian sources of it as well as other the Russian Orthodox Church , other social movements that were trying to portray her as unworthy of being president . I'm glad you raised both of those examples, but particularly the Taiwanese president , because one of the seems to me challenges that women leaders face or women politicians face in trying to win high elected offices whether they can handle tough national security challenges. And I think we saw that in twenty twenty four , and then candidate Donald Trump really lean into the notion that Kamala Harris didn't have what it took to stand up to Xi Jinping or to Vladimir Putin. He talked about her as being a toy in their hands. Toy. Yes. So help me understand because obviously if you are running for president of Taiwan, security, national security , foreign policy has got to be one of the big issues because of the whole question of where things stand with China. Yes. So here I think credentials and popular support really were critical to ident Pres Psy's winning bid. At first the party came to her when it was suffering a corruption crisis scandal and she ran agreed to run for president, did not win the first time. The second time , she did win. And had been the lead negotiator for Taiwan's accession to the GAAT global agreement on trade and tariffs and the World Trade Organization and then was asked to be the head of the Mainland Affairs Council. So she was very familiar with cross strait relations . So she understood the issue. She was a known figure , she was in the legislative Yuan , but she also was for a transparent culture. And played to her benefit because there was a student uprising , the sunlight protest that objected to the backroom negotiations with China. And she became really I think,, a darling of the youth of Taiwan. She embodied this reality now that the great majority of people in Taiwan see themselves as Taiwanese , not Chinese. And then when she came to power, she really adopted a very comprehensive plan to bolster the social safety net of Taiwan which was fraying, but also be inclusive about bringing in women , bringing in indigenous people. She fought for all kinds of measures to make her society more resilient, which is part of defeating hybrid warfare. They're in a much stronger place now as a result of her eight years of presidency. So do you see any lessons or common themes that emerge when you look at women politicians who face this question of whether or not they could hand le tough national security challenges nonetheless got elected. Do we see anything we can draw out as this is the way to tackle the issue? Yes, well, I think in Tai's case, I would just say she was very careful not to tip into a provocative. There was no question of declaring formal independence. She says they already feel independent. They're defending their rights .. And it is It's ranked in the top ten democracies in the world. I think people maybe don't realize that , but she did prove herself through that track record. And I think that the formula that I saw as I looked across these cases. And there are about fourteen women in the book that are discussed in some detail. But the theme that began emerging with the Taiwan case was an emphasis on domestic resilience . And part of that is to be unifying and not divisive. The idea that you can have social policies that benefit everyone economically and so forth, but also bring in the people who've been marginalized or discriminated against to have information and cyber policies that prevent these attacks from abroad, but also the divisive social media. So I think that was the main theme , but I also saw women being quite adept at understanding they were being attacked from abroad by a hybrid warfare strategy. So not just military. Yes, they did defend a strong defense policy, but they saw it was equally important to have economic, informational, social , what we call all elements of national power as part of their defense. Finally, they all looked to inter national partners and reforming the international system so they would have a stronger coalition, if you will , to help bolster them. Because in many cases, these leaders came from smaller countries , they could not hope to prevail against these existential challenges without partners and allies. And so I think that predilection to build strong partnerships is there as well. Can I draw out more on that Linda in terms of partnerships? Because I think it's very clear and you've alluded to this that when you look at right wing parties , there's been a lot of cross border transnational collaboration , I guess, collective learning, if I could put it that way. Are we seeing anything like that as women leaders try to learn from the successes of others, encouraging others? Because again,, well I take your base point that we've seen a decline in women's political participation as you look around the world. There are still a fair number of women who are running their countries. In Japan you have Take ichi Senai . So in George Romania I mentioned in Italy. So help me understand to what extent we're seeing collaboration in terms of knocking down these barriers that women leaders face. Yes. Since you stepped down as a term limited, President Zi has actually really been for trying to form a democratic coalition around the world. And I use that in an inform al sense of the democratic small digital. That's right, yes, and a coalition in that it's a collective of like minded countries rather than a formal name like NATO . So she has really traveled around widely doing that. And it's great you mentioned Take Sanai because one of her first acts in office was to come out and speak in defense of Taiwan and indicate that made Beijing very unhappy very unhappy, but very important to Taiwan, of course, but also all the countries around the world that are worried about the ambiguous signals from the US and whither the Democrat ic community . The other very important center of gravity is Europe . So you do have a preponderance of women. Half of the women leaders in the world today are in Europe and that's a legacy of not only their culture and history, but the European Union literally requires both democratic standards and a gender equality framework for people to enter into that twenty seven state union. And I think you have now forty percent in the European Union are the vice presidents in the commission. So they have significant representation. Mete Frederickson has been one of the standouts in Denmark as Prime Minister of Denmark, but you have a collection, Ka Kalis of Estonia, now the senior the high representative and vice president for foreign policy and security policy in the EU . These women have really made this hallmark of being strong on the democratic principles and strong on uniting against not just Russia , but building up this coalition approach, the middle powers you hear, that was Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister's term. But I think you're seeing a gathering in under the umbrella of democracy. And I think that's important that women, they're not seen as governing for women. They're helping to form a big tent in favor of democracy, but an inclusive democracy. And I want to close on the question of what the policy recommendations are that flow from the work you've been doing I take it that part of it is up to people individually mobilize and to act and to participate. But particularly when you look at issues like the role played by social media , advances in AI, you've talked about deep fakes, the ability to troll anonymously. Does that suggest a policy platform that we should be talking about in terms of changing how social media operates? Yes, and in fact, to go back again to the European Union, that is one of the entities that has legislation, the Digital Services Act that is squarely centered on this idea of product safety, and that it's the responsibility of the companies to ensure their products are safe. And it requires them to assess their products for risk, including the risk of promoting gender based violence. A number of other systemic risks . They have to evaluate it, adopt mitigations, show they are taking action, and if not, they have a very hefty six percent fine of gross revenues that can be levied. So that's the kind of action. Australia has also been a leader in that regard. Many other countries are starting to adopt laws in this regard. And I think it's essential for people to understand it's about product safety, not censorship . So I actually see and if I may say, the US has adopted its first law, the Take It Down Act last year, and the first lady, Melania Trump advocated for it , and it's the first law to criminalize the sharing of intimate images and deep fakes. We're not seeing much implementation yet, but it's a law on the books. The other thing is our democracies as repres entative as they can be. And electoral reform in many countries, including this one, I think, is a growing topic. And again, it's what that look like. So there is the American Academy of Arts and Sciences came out with a report last October advocating that Congress adopt a multi member district proportional representation . And that kind of scheme is a way to ensure the popular vote is more adequately reflected you would get rid of the problem of political gerrymandering. That yes, and