Election time for the next Secretary-General of the United Nations is around us, and much of the talk surrounding these elections revolves around the absence of female candidates for this position.

It's not that there are no qualified women for the job, many feminist organizations (like Equality Now, Amnesty International and Now) have pointed to Prime Minister Helen Clark of New Zealand, President Tarja Halonen of Finland, and former UN High Commissioner Sadako Ogata of Japan, among others, as qualified. Kofi Annan even made a statement in support of the next Secretary-General being a woman.

I personally find it quite interesting. On the one hand, I would love for a woman to be in a powerful global-political role. On the other hand, however, I am not sure that I'm entirely comfortable with the women who do gain these positions gaining them as a token response to mass amounts of publicity.

Link Haya Rashed Al Khalifa was elected president of the 61st General Assembly, this could actually harm the initiative to consider women for the UN top job, as selectors could easily argue that women are already well represented in the world body, sitting at the head of the General Assembly.

How could a possible argument against an action be means enough to HARM the initiative? There's ALWAYS a possible argument against EVERY action; especially actions involving women penetrating male spheres of influence.


Also, this argument against nominating a woman makes no sense to me. But, I guess we have to start somewhere, right?

There are a lot of interesting articles on the topic. I'll attach some links in case you haven't been caught up.

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Here's a list of well-qualified female potential candidates:
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