Obama: To Solve World Problems Put Women in Charge! -The iPINIONS Journal

Former President Barack Obama is making news today for a speech he delivered yesterday before the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal.

Local media hailed it as a “rock star” performance. Never mind that he did little more than regale wistful Canadians with trademark insights and reassurances about what portends for world affairs in this age of Trump.

But what I found most interesting, and what is getting too little attention, is what Obama said about women ruling the world:

In my lifetime I think we’ll see a woman president of the United States. …

I did conclude at a certain point that if you just put women in charge of every country for just about two years, the world would make a huge leap forward and just be better off generally.

(Canadian National Post, June 6, 2017)

I just wish he had come to this enlightened conclusion during his presidency. It might have moved Obama to appoint women to more than 35 percent of the positions in his cabinet. Indeed, it speaks volumes that his famous protégés, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron, appointed women to at least 50 percent of those positions, respectively.

Not to mention that some of us have been championing this inverse of gender roles in public life for many years. I, for one, have been in the vanguard with commentaries like “Cracking the Glass Ceiling: First Woman to Become President in South America,” December 12, 2005, and “Women Make Better Politicians than Men,” October 14, 2010.

Indeed, nothing has made me prouder in this respect than my mother country of the Turks and Caicos Islands electing our first female premier recently. I duly hailed this historic and transformative event in “Hooray! Turks and Caicos Elects First Female Premier, Sharlene Cartwright-Robinson,” December 16, 2016. But the following excerpt from “Men Should Be Barred from Politics,” September 25, 2013, remains most instructive.

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We have enough data, as well as anecdotal evidence, from the way women have influenced the corporate world to make some credible extrapolations. The correlation between more women holding positions of power and the implementation of family-friendly policies is undeniable in this respect. Therefore, it’s entirely reasonable to assert that if more women held positions of power in politics they would use their power more towards building up human resources than military armaments – just to cite one obvious example.

Finland’s president, prime minister, president of the Supreme Court, as well as eight of its eleven government ministers are all women. Arguably, there’s a direct correlation between their positions and the fact that Newsweek rated this county the best place to live in 2010 – in terms of health, economic dynamism, education, political environment, and quality of life.

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All the same, it’s perhaps instructive that Obama followed up his speech with a bromantic meal with Trudeau. Because the only thing missing from viral pictures of their rendezvous was a caption befitting the gender inversion they both espouse, namely:

Gentlemen who lunch

Hail, woman power!

* This commentary was originally published yesterday, Wednesday, at 2.26 p.m.