Hillary Rodham Clinton: A tribute to women

In a male-dominated world order, you have to count the number two and three women. It is an indictment of democracy and 'civilisation'. Even in the greatest country, serious women could only play second fiddle.PHOTO: COURTESY

By the time you read this, Hillary Rodham Clinton might well have become the first female president of the United States. Symbolically, it should be the ultimate trophy for women in the political arena.

If this happens, I should prostrate before my daughter, beg for mercy and apologise on behalf of all men for having treated womenfolk as inferior for centuries. Gentlemen, with President Clinton, women will have taken over the world.

And if she loses to you know who, I should still throw myself flat and plead for pardon.

Seriously, either way, the good lady will be the first woman to come this far towards the most powerful political seat in the globe.

Only two other US women ever seriously contended for presidency using a major party: Geraldine Ferraro for the Democratic Party, 1984, and Republican Sarah Palin in 2008. But even these were gunning for number two.

Some 136 years before, Victoria Woodhull had tried using a minor party at a time when women were not allowed to vote. She could not even vote for herself.

In a male-dominated world order, you have to count the number two and three women. It is an indictment of democracy and 'civilisation'. Even in the greatest country, serious women could only play second fiddle.

It has always struck me as curious that with all her economic glory, democratic culture, equality and freedom, the US has never elected a woman as president. Yet most major democracies in the world have already produced female presidents or have regular serious contenders. The story of India and Indira Gandhi is well known.

Britain had the 'Iron Lady' Margaret Thatcher. Germany is currently being ruled by that tough lady, Angela Merkel. Brazil elected one Dilma Rousseff in 2011 and sacked her this year!

Even developing democracies are demonstrating that women no longer 'belong to the kitchen and bedroom', as a Nigerian male chauvinist-in-chief, Muhammadu Buhari has so poignantly reminded us. There is Liberia's Ellen Johnson and Malawi's Joyce Banda. Even the chaotic Central Africa Republic had to look to Catherine Samba-Panza to head the interim government during the latest cycle of crisis there.

The perception that women cannot lead is a cultural construct. Culture is stronger than fact. Culturally, man is immediately after birth expected to be a self-sufficient, almost pre-set human being.

Most cultures set men to prove themselves that they can protect women and children.

However, with the modern economic framework allowing women to surpass men, the provider-protector husband is really an option. The Guardian Angel father is no more. Today, those traditional characteristics defining men like endurance, bravery, loyalty are principally outdated. But women have rapidly gained territory.

The modern economic structure has drastically removed masculinity from men and invested it in women, in a progression that I call the 'feminisation of the world'. We are experiencing the irreversible construction of female masculinities that is producing more alpha girls, who are not just female cocks confronting male potency, but women who are already taking over traditional masculine roles. Now, Hilary Clinton is now their high 'priest'.

No one laboured as much to break the dominating male world order like Margaret Thatcher. Her relentless privatisation programmes in the 80s saw thousands of men rendered jobless and start relying on their women for sustenance. As privatisation spread across the world, more men found themselves losing their status in the family and consequently in the society.

But even the so-called women subjugation has always been largely symbolic, sometime to maintain peace and harmony in this world. Personally, I hold the view that behind the scenes, women have always controlled this world in subtle but powerful ways.

We have already heard this repeated ad infinitum: women make half of humanity. The bulk of the labour generating more than half of global production is from women. In Africa, women account for 74 per cent of agricultural production.

Women leaders have in many ways proved capable of making great impact on ordinary lives. Nowhere is this manifest as in the way they organise themselves in social-economic activities at the grassroots. Locally, many men chamas soon crumble after everyone has got their money in the round.

So strong are woman leadership and bonding instincts that Mohammad Yunus harnessed this power into what is now known as the 'Grameen Bank', a micro-financing concept that earned him the 2012 Nobel Peace prize.

From this view, Hilary Clinton's presidency should be a welcome thing in this troubled world.

World affairs will still be mostly male-dominated, though women will increasingly control the post-industrial world. Statistics support this: In Canada, female breadwinners are more than male. In UK, women have outnumbered men in just about all fields. This trend has been spreading around the world in the past 30 years and Kenya is not spared.

However, beyond the gender wars, I can only salute the Clintons of this world by citing another great woman, Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate and political gadfly and Myanmar's de facto leader.