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World News
SPRING SEMESTER
March 2006
Pg.3
Women gaining power around the world
Bill Lambrecht
KRT Wire Service
Sworn in as president of Liberia,
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf vowed to attack the
corruption that lay beneath the recent
bloodshed and despair in her African nation.
In Chile, newly inaugurated
President Michelle Bachelet, tortured as a teen
during a dictatorship, was propelled to power
by voters who were weary of machismo
politics and corrupt leaders.
Angela Merkel, elected in November
as Germany's first woman chancellor, leaped
to power earlier in her career after her mentor,
ex-Chancellor Helmut Kohl, was cut down by
a slush-fund scandal.
Where trouble and corruption hang
in the air, voters around the world are
increasingly turning to women to clean up the
mess left behind by bad-old-boy networks.
The United States trails much of the
world in the success of female candidates,
ranking behind dozens of countries in the
percentage of women elected to parliamentary
bodies.
That is due in large measure to the
fact that about 70 countries now prescribe hard
quotas or voluntary goals for women's
participation.
But some U.S. strategists believe the
budding lobbying scandal in Washington will
heighten the chances of women candidates
who are trymg to unseat Congressional
incumbents in November. And the
groundbreaking successes of women in other
nations have helped rekindle talk about if, and
when, a woman will be elected to the White
House.
"People are talking about Hillary
and Condi and thinking why, if it can happen
in Germany and Chile and Liberia, can't it
happen in the United States?" said Yolanda
Richardson, president of the Center for
Development and Population Activities, a
Washington-based nonprofit group that works
to improve the lives of women and girls.
She was referring to Sen. Hillary
Clinton of New York, spouse of the ex
president and a leading light in the Democratic
Party; and Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of
state whose political fortunes received a boost
recently when First Lady Laura Bush said she
should nm for the Republicanas' presidential
nomination.
Political veterans wonder if 2008 is
a realistic goal for a woman reaching the
presidency, given Clinton's lightning-rod status
and Rice's assertion that she won't run.
Nonetheless, Richardson and other
strategists say that around the world, women
are fast climbing into new realms of power.
"The trend lines are good.
Increasingly there are breakthroughs in women
achieving leadership positions, and it's
happening faster than ever before." she said.
See Women Gaining power. Page 5
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