This week, Nicola Sturgeon shocked the media with her dramatic resignation from the position of First Minister of Scotland. It comes just weeks after New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, staged her own surprise exit. With both women citing exhaustion in their resignation speeches, what does it say about our political culture that these women are jumping ship?
Even before their resignations on different sides of the planet, Sturgeon and Ardern’s leadership styles had been compared and praised for their feminist ethic, which showed that traditionally feminine norms had a place in the highest offices in the world. They demonstrated a different way of leading, with intelligence, competence, and empathy.
Yet both women also left their positions this year with an air of burnout. In an unusually human turn of phrase for a politician, Ardern came clean, saying she simply had “nothing left in the tank,” while an emotional Sturgeon told the UK she needed to focus on “Nicola Sturgeon the human being” not “Nicola Sturgeon the politician.” Our question must be, why can't she be both?
“You can be kind but strong, empathetic but decisive, optimistic but focused...that you can be your own kind of leader.”
As a young woman working in the junior ranks of politics, watching these events unfold fills me with despair. From where I stand, I see two women who fought hard to do politics differently. Fought for a politics that values compassion, consensus and respect. Both women strove to humanise politicians as ordinary people, with families, personalities, and interests beyond the front pages. And what did they get? An exhausting and thankless career which left them burnt out and quitting at the top of their game.
Here in England, it has been 30 years since all-women shortlists were introduced, and all major parties have made strides towards gender equality in the last few elections: 104 of the 196 Labour MPs elected at the 2019 election were women, while the Conservatives recently celebrated their – albeit short-lived – third female Prime Minister.
Yet, if we're not changing the culture of politics, we are simply asking women to behave like men to secure power and influence. This is no progress at all. It's why many feminists have become fatigued by the idea that simply having more women in politics will change anything for women across society. Sturgeon and Ardern’s resignations show us that while the face of politics has changed, the culture has not.
This echoes a recent report by The Fawcett Society, a gender equality charity, which found that 37% of women MPs agreed that “the culture in Parliament is inclusive for people like me,” compared to a majority of men (55%).
Long live our feminist queen.
If anything, it feels as though politics has become even more macho and 'blokey' in recent years. Successful politicians like Boris Johnson presided over what one documentary called a “nasty, misogynistic culture,” returning the House of Commons to a back-room boys club. In 2023, we have a Cabinet which only has six women in it (making up just 27% of top Ministers) while gendered norms and language persist.
For a nerdy but illustrative example, a quick look at Prime Minister’s Questions each week shows that, of the twelve showdowns since Sunak became PM in October, Starmer has accused him of being “weak” nine times while Sunak throws back that he is “tough” most of the time. Even light-hearted jibes about Sunak’s height play into gendered ideas about what it means to be a politician.
This kind of language does nothing to change our political culture, which valorises traditionally masculine norms like stoicism and rationality over traditionally feminine ideals of empathy and consensus. I am absolutely not saying that all women are empathetic or motivated by consensus, there are plenty who are not, and women should be allowed to break this mould. Still, our politics must have space for these values to be truly inclusive.
So, what do we do about this problem? How do we avoid another wave of women walking away from politics? The same Fawcett Society report has some answers: sexist online abuse must be stopped, they say, after 93% of women MPs said that online abuse or harassment has a negative impact on how they feel about being an MP. At the same time, candidates and MPs alike both need more budget for things like childcare costs, and parliament should consider whether MPs should be allowed to vote remotely in specific circumstances, like while heavily pregnant. The lobby group also called for all political parties to prioritise quotas and short-lists to create long-term change.
But more than these procedural changes, we all have to take responsibility for changing the culture of politics. Our polarised and often toxic political, cultural demands that we channel the feminist leadership styles demonstrated by Sturgeon and Ardern, rejecting the idea that it has no place in our politics. Many studies have shown that women’s leadership styles benefit the people around them.
Ardern and Sturgeon may be retiring from political life, but their legacy lives on to inspire the next generation of feminist leaders.
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