Profs & Pints Northern Virginia: Women as Heads of State

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “Women as Heads of State,” a worldwide look at what difference it makes for countries to have women in charge, with Mariya Omelicheva, professor of strategy at National Defense University and adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies.

By the end of 2023, more than 60 countries—including six of the world’s ten most populous—had had a female head of state or head of government. Today, more women serve as parliamentarians, ministers, and local elected officials than ever before. They hold top political offices in 27 out of the 193 member states of the United Nations.

Although the gender gap in state leadership is far from being closed, the marked increase in the number of women executives raises question such as: How and why do women rise to power? Are there distinct female and male styles of leadership? What difference, if any, would it make if more nations had women in charge?

Hear such questions tackled by Professor Mariya Omelicheva, a scholar of gender and politics and issues related to security, democracy, and human rights.

Drawing upon her extensive research, Dr. Omelicheva will sort through the mixed evidence on whether the increased participation of women in countries’ political leadership translates into substantive policy changes. She’ll dispense with the popular idea that greater women participation in countries’ political leadership brings a greater focus on social justice and peace, discussing how in international relations women political leaders have initiated and escalated conflicts more often than male leaders.

To understand why female political leaders do not necessarily choose peaceful resolutions of international disputes or advocate progressive policies, Dr. Omelicheva will discuss such women’s career paths and how they deal with the stereotype-driven perceptions that being a woman is incompatible with being a top political executive. To succeed in political careers, they must develop a set of strategies and repertoires of behavior that comport with the stereotypical requirements of political leadership. They act more like men leaders, tending to overcompensate for their perceived weaknesses by adopting heavy-handed responses.

Women’s advances in politics won’t translate into policies advantageous to women without long-term, comprehensive efforts to change attitudes and close structural gaps, Dr. Omelicheva will argue.

Among the other questions she’ll tackle: Are women leaders judged by the same standards as their male counterparts? Why has there been no woman president of the United States? (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: Iceland’s Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, who in 1980 became the first woman in the world to be democratically elected as a nation’s president. (Photo by Rob Croes of Algemeen Nederlandsch Fotobureau / Wikimedia Commons.)