If the world has felt more dangerous lately, you’re not mistaken. The number of conflicts has been rising. And from Ukraine and Russia, to Israel and Gaza, and Sudan – a common thread running through all these wars is they are waged by men.
Meanwhile in other parts of the world we have seen powerful men wielding chainsaws for fun.
Just 13 out of 193 countries have female leaders (according to October 2024 data).
If there were more, things would be wildly different, says the likes of former US president Barack Obama.
There would be “less war, kids would be better taken care of and there would be a general improvement in living standards and outcomes,” he said previously.
He’s not alone. Former Irish president Mary Robinson told Sky News ahead of International Women’s Day that having more women at the top was “necessary” for a more peaceful world.
And on this day 19 years ago, former United Nations chief Kofi Annan said: “No policy is more important in preventing conflict” than empowering women.
A woman has still never done his job, in 80 years of the UN.
Are they right? The answer is more than just the women at the top would have to change.
Afraid to appear soft
A glance through history suggests women leaders have been just as, if not more, “prone to initiating conflicts” as men, according to Christopher Blair, assistant professor of politics at Princeton University.
They are incentivised to act as “Iron Ladies” specifically to overcome gender stereotypes that cast them as dovish and “less competent” on national security, he says.
Just look at Margaret Thatcher: in 1982, Britain’s first female prime minister plunged 323 people to their deaths on Argentina’s Belgrano warship, and led the UK through the Falklands War.
Or the famously hawkish US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who hesitated over peace talks with the Taliban “because she was afraid of being perceived as stereotypically soft,” says Blair, based on insight from her advisers.
In what is nowadays a “much more hypermasculine world”, according to author Joslyn Barnhart, women are under pressure to “lean even more into masculine stereotypes of leadership”.
Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s darling of the right and first woman leader, chose to take the masculine form of her title, il Presidente.
Women are also penalised more harshly for backing down from threats, Blair’s research finds, encouraging them to add fuel to the fire, not put it out.
In 2016, The Sun newspaper hailed Theresa May as resembling “Maggie at her best”. Two years later, it hammered for being “soft” on Brexit, leaving the country “IN THE BREXS*IT”.
People are different, so it depends on the woman – or man
Angela Saini, author of “Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule”, says it is not that women imitate male aggression, rather that they are well capable of being aggressive themselves.
In 1975, India’s prime minister Indira Gandhi declared a state emergency and crackdown on opponents, civil rights and the press.
The warrior queen Rani of Jhansi led the Indian rebellion against the British in 1857, and before her there were Boudica and Joan of Arc.
So when asked if women could make the world more peaceful, Saini says: “Which women do you mean?”
She adds: “Because frankly, if it’s a choice of a world run by women like Thatcher and Liz Truss or, looking to the US, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Sarah Palin – that is not the kind of world that I would want to live in.”
So much would have to change to answer the question
The world has had so few women leaders that it makes it hard to truly compare them with men. (Although one paper found that queens in Europe in the 15th to 20th centuries were more likely to go to war than kings).
But just one in three UN countries has ever had even one woman in the top position.
Society would have to change so radically “in order to bring us to a world in which women are in charge, that it feels impossible to extrapolate from what we know today to that hypothetical situation,” says psychologist Cordelia Fine, who wrote “Patriarch Inc”.
Not just about the leader
But what we do know is giving women other forms of power does make societies more peaceful.
“Women’s leadership is not just about women being ‘in charge’,” says Mary Robinson.
Studies show that involving more women in: peace processes makes them last longer; in parliament leads to lower defence spending; and in elections makes democracies more peaceful.
And it is these types of societies that make way for different kinds of leaders.
In New Zealand – ranked fourth highest globally for gender equality – recent prime minister Jacinda Ardern attempted “a very different model of leadership” to aggressive counterparts, says Joslyn Barnhart, who researches women’s suffrage.
“Of course, we see things going very much in the opposite direction at the moment, much more towards a return to masculine, aggressive, assertive voices,” she says.
Various surveys from different countries have found women are more averse to war (whether this is nature or nurture is another debate) – though that balances out when the threat is imminent.
Mary Robinson says it is not that women are better than men.
It is that “solving the world’s toughest challenges needs all voices, not just those of half the global population”.
