What Happens When Women Take Power?

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Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria has written that "one of the quiet, unreported tidal waves of the past decade is the rise of women in public life." The past few weeks have seen the first women heads of state in Africa and South America and the first woman Chancellor of Germany. Iraq's new parliament will be 25% female. In 1990, Mary Robinson became the first female President of Ireland. For the next seven years, she increased the profile of an office with limited powers. In 1997, she was named UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and used that bureaucratic position to become a public advocate for the human rights agenda worldwide. Do women make a real difference? Do they have different priorities, styles and ways of achieving their goals? What about a woman President of the United States?
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Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq

Zakaria's Newsweek article, 'First Ladies, in the Truest Sense'

Women Who Make the World Worse

Angela Merkel, BBC profile of

Michelle Bachelet, BBC article on

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, BBC profile of

ABC TV's Commander in Chief

San Jose Mercury News article on Google's privacy fight

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Warren Olney