CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

When Women Reach the Top, but Power Remains the Same

President’s Secretariat (GODL-India)

This may seem like a slightly belated reaction to India’s President’s visit to Macedonia 20-23 July. Yet the event deserves a brief reflection through a gender lens. The real inspiration comes from my engagement in a two-year project aimed at encouraging greater participation of women in politics — Gender Equality Mobilization (GEM), implemented together with academic and civil society institutions from Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia. Our aim is to encourage young women and girls to consider politics as a way to improve their position in society and make their voices heard and effective. As part of this effort, we organized mentoring sessions with female MPs and councilors, offering young women an opportunity to see political work beyond the public image. That was until some of the ‘mentors’ began publicly calling their female colleagues ‘hens.’ At that moment, the masks fell off, revealing something deeply rooted in Macedonian political culture.

The visit of India’s President Droupadi Murmu, hosted by Macedonia’s President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova, was undoubtedly a significant event for a small state like Macedonia. An official visit by the head of state of a country of 1.4 billion people naturally attracted attention. Some interpreted it, mistakenly, as a possible sign of a shift away from Macedonia’s almost fatalistic attachment to the so-called Collective West. Yet the visit is not primarily about geopolitics, even though there were some gestures in promoting economic cooperation (a topic that deserves a comprehensive analysis). Here we raise a much broader question: Can women who reach the highest positions of state become genuine political actors, or do they remain symbolic figures within male-dominated parties and systems of power?

The protocol elements of the visit (the bust of Gandhi, the visit to Mother Teresa’s birthplace, a rather non-transparent business forum and the trip to Ohrid) unfolded according to the expected script for two ‘British-style........

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