Power Surge More And More Women Around The Globe Are Rising To Political Positions With Clout

Four women vying for the presidency of Ireland.

A woman vice president in Iran.

Secretary of state Madeleine Albright.

Never before have so many women held so much power. Indeed, the growing participation and representation of women in politics is one of the most remarkable developments of the late 20th century.

Why is political power, off limits for so long, suddenly becoming accessible to women? And what are the implications of this trend for domestic and foreign policy?

The statistics are no secret. The global average of female legislators is now 11 percent, up from 7.4 percent in 1975. In the United States, women account for 11 percent of Congress. In Britain, women account for 18 percent of the House of Commons.

This year the Inter-Parliamentary Union reported only nine countries without women in their legislatures. Moreover, 24 women have served as presidents or prime ministers during the 1990s.

The global surge in women officeholders defies simple explanations, although three interconnected factors seem to stand out.

First factor: The recent wave of female mobilization can be seen as a response to a series of political and economic crises - and opportunities - over the last two decades. Women were valued participants in the opposition to authoritarian rule in the former Soviet bloc and Latin America, where they took up the cause of human rights when their husbands and sons were arrested - such as the Argentine mothers who formed the famous group Madres de la Plaza de Mayo.

On the economic front, women have responded to the widespread adoption of market-oriented reforms, often accompanied by austerity programs, by banding together to fight price rises and the loss of health care and other public services.

This solidarity became a cross-border phenomenon during the United Nations Decade for Women (1976-1985), when the United Nations put the spotlight on women’s issues by convening official delegations from member countries to report on the status of women and to commit governments to enacting reforms.

When those very same nations were slow to implement their international pledges, their foot-dragging helped to stimulate women’s interest in increasing their political power.

Second factor: Women are taking advantage of new willingness by political parties and states to ease constraints on women’s access to politics by organizing voting blocs and mobilizing financial support.

One innovative effort, a group called Women of Russia, formed to stem the decline in women’s representation under the new democratic electoral rules, surprised everyone by gathering more than 100,000 signatures and winning 8 percent of the vote in the 1993 Duma election. Since then, other Russian parties have seen fit to nominate more women.

But the surest - and most controversial - way to boost the number of women in national legislatures is to adopt a quota system that requires a certain percentage of women to be nominated or elected. Argentina, India and the Nordic states have held national and local elections under quota requirements and many others, including several in the European Union, are considering them.

In addition to state politics, political parties have committed themselves to nominate a specific percentage of women to “winnable” positions.

Although they remain anathema in the United States, quotas are increasingly being used elsewhere not only because they encourage more inclusive representation, but also for practical political reasons. In Britain, for example, the adoption of quotas by the Labour Party has produced recent victories when women are running for marginal seats.

Third factor: In the post-Cold War world, social issues are supplanting security concerns and, in the process, reordering priorities and opening the door to new styles of leadership. In many respects, the traditional issues women were steered into - child care, health care and education - have emerged as the top political issues in the 1990s.

Historically and today, women and women leaders are more interested in the so-called “soft” issues such as the environment and social welfare.

They are more pacifistic than men, less likely to favor defense spending, or to support aggressive policies abroad. In other areas, they are more conservative than men, focusing on policies that support the family and strengthen local communities.

But, like their male counterparts, female officeholders come from all parts of the ideological spectrum and depend on the support of diverse and often divided constituencies. For every women such as former prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway or Ireland’s president Mary Robinson who supports the “soft” issues, there have been women such as Indira Gandhi or Margaret Thatcher fully capable of using force to achieve their ends.

Predictions that women will act as a bloc have never been borne out in the past.

Today women are recruited aggressively into politics not to right past inequities or to recognize their equal citizenship - but to bring a different, explicitly female perspective to the polical arena and to appeal to the women’s vote.

But whether the rationale for increasing female representation is equality or difference, women will have an unprecedented opportunity to put their stamp on global politics in the century ahead.

MEMO: Jane S. Jaquette is chair of the department of diplomacy and world affairs and B.H. Orr professor of liberal arts at Occidental College. This commentary is adapted from an article appearing in

This sidebar appeared with the story: WOMEN IN CONGRESS Fifty-nine women hold seats in the 105th U.S. Congress. In the House of Representatives, women hold 50 of the 435 seats. In the Seante, women hold 9 of the 100 seats. The nine women in the Senate are Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) and Carol Mosley-Braun (D-Ill.)

WASHINGTON LEADS STATES The 10 states with the highest percentages of women state legislators are:

Legislature Percent women Washington 39.5 Arizona 37.8 Colorado 35.0 Nevada 33.3 Vermont 32.2 New Hampshire 30.9 Minnesota 30.3 Maryland 29.8 Kansas 29.7 Connecticut 28.9