In 1960 Mrs Sirimavo Bandaranaike, a Sri Lanka socialist, became the world’s first elected female prime minister. Like many Asian female leaders since then, the glass ceiling was broken by assassination – in this case of her husband. Pakistan leader Benazir Bhutto, another socialist, inherited her political party from her executed father Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.
Sheikh Hasina, prime minister of Bangladesh from 1996-2001 and 2009-2024 and a staunch socialist, was, from my experience, a charmless misanthrope. To be fair, her character was no doubt scarred by the assassination of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and 26 of her family household. Somewhat unusually Indira Gandhi, a neo-Marxist, inherited leadership of India’s Congress Party and prime ministership from her father Jawaharlal Nehru, who died a natural death. After both Indira and her son Rajiv were murdered, leadership of Congress devolved to the latter’s Italian widow Sonia.
Apart from socialism, the characteristic that these female leaders from the subcontinent had in common was that they made their families fabulously rich.
An honourable mention here should be made of Khaleda Zia, prime minister of Bangladesh from 1991-1996 and 2001-2006, who inherited her position from her assassinated husband, President Ziaur Rahman. She was a rarity in being the only non-socialist female leader to emerge from the subcontinent. I met Khaleda Zia on several occasions. She was pro-business and a charmer.
According to the Council on Foreign Relation’s Women’s Power Index, 82 out of 193 countries have had female leaders (42.5 per cent). Excluding hereditary monarchs, 29 of 193 countries currently have female presidents or prime ministers.
No doubt UN Women (aka the ‘The United Nations Programme for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women’) would regard the rise of women as progress. It has noted, with implied criticism, that based on historic trends it will take another 130 years to achieve gender parity in these top roles. It should be asked why is this a desirable result? Should society aim to have 50/50 parity in all professions?
As Jordan Peterson memorably asked a trenchant feminist, why are feminists not complaining that 99 per cent of bricklayers are men? To state the obvious, gender and sexual orientation are crucial determinants in both aptitude and choice of career. The left favour mandatory gender rebalancing only when it favours them. Do you hear feminists protests that 68 per cent of employees in publishing are women? Campaigns for equal female or LGBT representation are pursued for reasons of political self-interest. The matrices they present are almost always entirely bogus and hypocritical.
Noticeably the West’s pro-Hamas left has failed to point out that in the 80-year period since World War II, the Middle East and North Africa have been able to produce only one female national leader, the Jewish Golda Meir. She was Israel’s prime minister through the 1973 Yom Kippur War, whose start was infamously celebrated by Hamas on October 7 2023. Meir’s premiership is an inconvenient fact for feminist agitators who support Arab jihadists groups that would never in a thousand years allow a female leader. Obviously there would be no ‘gender divergent’ politicians in the region because they would be murdered quicker than they could say ‘LGBT’.
The political orientation of female leaders in the world is overwhelmingly leftist. According to the Chapel Hill Expert Survey in 2024, left wing female world leaders outnumber right wing female leaders by 6 to 1 and by 2 to 1 if centrists are included.
For those of us on the political right, therefore, the arrival of 64-year-old Sanae Takaichi as Japan’s first female prime minister is welcome news. In a society largely devoid of ‘wokery’ and renowned for its social conservativism we can be pretty sure that Takaichi was chosen not for equality reasons but on merit.
Takaichi, a former heavy metal drummer and biker, is someone the world would not expect to become prime minister of Japan. Particularly if that someone is a woman. But last week Takaichi, leader of the Liberal Democrat Party (LDP) that has ruled Japan for all but four of the last 70 years, forged an alliance with the libertarian Japan Innovation Party (Ishin) to form a new government.
Her backers have pedigree. She is the choice of the LDP kingmaker Taro Aso whose grandfather Shigeru Yoshida ranks with Germany’s former chancellor Conrad Adenauer as one of the great political figures who rebuilt the post-war world. Takaichi is also the protégé of Shinzo Abe, the most consequential Japanese prime minister of the last 50 years. His economic policies, known as ‘Abenomics’ brought an end to the 20-year slough known as the ‘lost decades’ the followed Japan’s great financial crash in 1990. Abe’s three pillars were easy money policies, fiscal stimulus and structural reform. Expect something similar from Takaichi.
However, the omens for a long premiership are not the best. Hers is a minority government, albeit just two votes short of a majority, and she is the fourth Japanese prime minister since the resignation of Shinzo Abe in 2020. So she needs a quick start in dealing with Japan’s problems. Many of these stem from President Trump’s tariff policies. The New York Post may have enthused ‘Trump ready to rock with heavy metal drummer’ but the imposition of 15 per cent levies on Japanese exports and demands that they invest $550million are not policies that are going to do Takaichi’s prime ministership any favours. She may feel shortchanged given Trump’s description of her leadership as ‘tremendous news’.
On international issues Trump and Nakaichi should see eye to eye. She is committed to the defence of Taiwan and believes in increased defence expenditure to stave off the threat of Chinese hegemony. Her feisty performance at APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation) over the weekend suggests that she will be an aggressive anti-China presence on the international stage. The photograph of a pro-forma handshake between Takaichi and Xi Jinping shows a hilariously awkward Chinese leader. https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/xw/zyxw/202511/t20251101_11745380.html
Alarming for some is the increased presence of young foreign workers. With a paltry birth rate and a record drop of 900,000 people in Japan’s population last year, foreign workers are needed but, as a result, Japan is having to deal with unfamiliar social pressures. Concerned that her views on immigration are perceived as too right wing, Takaichi has sought to row back on her political image. ‘I realised for the first time that people might have thought of me as a very extreme, right-wing conservative,’ she said recently, but ‘I think I’m an extremely ordinary person.’
Takaichi’s policies of lower taxes and more government spending bear an uncanny resemblance to those of British prime minister Liz Truss. The latter’s prime ministership lasted such a short time that her shelf life was compared to that of a lettuce. It may not have been helpful therefore that Truss posted a flattering description of Takaichi on X which described her victory as a ‘pushback against economic stagnation, excessive migration and the diminution of national sovereignty.’ It is already being questioned in the Japanese press whether Takaichi will be an ‘Iron Lady’ or a ‘Lettuce lady’.
Nevertheless, her prime ministership represents an important moment in Japanese history. Women in Japan have historically been viewed internationally as a downtrodden sex. This is a largely mythical narrative. Their power has always been in the home where they rule supreme; hen-pecked husbands are often referred to as gokiburi (cockroaches) – a term that may in future be applied to Takaichi’s international opponents.
The emergence of a strong female Japanese political leader on the right is a welcome addition to a G7 which already boasts the formidable Giorgia Meloni of Italy. It would be a wonderful thing if Takaichi could replicate, even in a small way, the successes of her heroine, Margaret Thatcher. The world needs an another ‘Iron Lady’, particularly one who can shift female politics away from its socialistic roots.
