Roels, Ryan 2018 Political Science Thesis Title: Explaining the Emergence of Female Leaders in Asia: with a focus on Thailand, South Korea, and Taiwan Advisor: Nimu Njoya Advisor is Co-author: None of the above Second Advisor: Michael MacDonald Released: release now Contains Copyrighted Material: No THE EMERGENCE OF WOMEN EXECUTIVES IN ASIA with a focus on Thailand, South Korea, and Taiwan by RYAN ROELS Professor Nimu Njoya, Advisor A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Political Science WILLIAMS COLLEGE Williamstown, Massachusetts MAY 9th, 2018 Preliminary Notes A quick note. I have followed the conventional naming styles of my case countries. In Thailand, the first name is used; in South Korea and Taiwan, the last name. Thus, Yingluck denotes Yingluck Shinawatra, Park denotes Park Geun-hye, and Tsai denotes Tsai Ing-wen. 2 Introduction In 1960, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) elected Sirimavo Bandaranaike as the nation’s prime minister thereby making her the first woman executive in the country, the continent, and the modern world. Since then Indira Gandhi, Corazon Aquino, Benazir Bhutto, Chandrika Kumaratunga, Sheikh Hasina, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Megawati Sukarnoputri, Pratibha Patil, Roza Otunbayeva, Yingluck Shinawatra, Park Geun-hye, Aung San Suu-kyi, and Tsai Ing-wen have all become their nation’s (typically first) female leader, all through democratic elections. Asian countries (excluding the Middle East) that have had one or more women presidents and prime ministers thus include: India, the Philippines, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Thailand, South Korea, Myanmar, and Taiwan. At the same time, most of these Asian countries present male-heavy political institutions and anti-female leadership attitudes that do not empower women let alone foreshadow the emergence of a female executive. Firstly, when it comes to the proportion of women in parliament, countries in Asia (excluding the Middle East) currently average about 19%— a figure below the 24% global mean (IPU 2010). Secondly, when it comes to social attitudes on women, many Asian countries exhibit a male preference and an anti-female bias, for instance by holding a majoritarian perspective that men make better political leaders than women (WVS 1981-2014). Thirdly, all countries in Asia — indeed, all countries of the world — possess an executive office that has been overwhelming populated by men, creating in turn a normatively masculine political domain (Duerst-Lahti 1995). Juxtaposing these barriers to women’s leadership with the simultaneous presence of female presidents and prime ministers prompts a question central to this thesis: what explains the emergence of women executives in Asia? 3 Previous Answers and the Existing Explanatory Framework The answer thus far is neither complete nor conclusive since the subject (and advent) of women executives is relatively new and emergent. In fact, as of August 2017 the world has only seen 114 female executives, with just 19 of them emerging in Asia (Jalalzai and Lee 2017). Scholars are thus only recently studying female leaders, and especially so within an Asia comprised of countries in East Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia— a geographic conception of Asia that is prevalent in previous studies1, and one that I continue to employ in this thesis. In another sense, Asia is particularly interesting to me because of a close personal attachment; I have lived and travelled in Asia for the past few years, and my roots can be found in several of its countries. With that in mind, a few scholars have discussed the intriguing rise of Asia’s female executives, resulting in several fascinating arguments. In 1990, Linda Richter was one of the first to explore the subject by listing and discussing the factors that unite and hopefully explain the emergence of women leaders in Asia. She, like many others, quickly noted that all but one of these women possess family ties to males previously in politics— a striking pattern that offers interesting avenues of analysis. From there, Richter explored variables ranging from the ideology of the patriarchy to the effect of female lifestyles, and even considered the influence of electoral arrangements. Her comparative study of countries in Southeast Asia prompted her to assert that family ties enhanced by the male relative’s martyrdom are the point of entry for most of Asia’s female leaders. She argues here that the relation to a storied individual is capable of catapulting women above the usual gender obstacles, such as the potentially-uncomfortable novelty of a female executive (Richter 1990). 1 For further information, see here the geographic groupings of HURIDOCS thesaurus of Bibliographic Standard Formats, as well as previous research by global organizations such as the IPU or by the UNDP. 4 Writing a decade later, Mark Thompson provided another perspective by building on Richter’s arguments. Analyzing Asia’s history, he explained that family ties emerge in many of the region’s political institutions because they legitimize succession and minimize division. He noted that this kind of “inherited charisma” manifests more frequently in daughters, sisters, or wives rather than sons, brothers or uncles because women can more easily acquire a patriarch’s allure, charm, and experience (Thompson 2015). Put differently, a male successor such as a son is more likely to be judged by the public on his own merits, making it more difficult for him to inherit the charisma of his father (against whom the son might pale in comparison). In another vein, Thompson also argued that women in Asian countries were (and are) particularly well-suited to lead nascent democratic movements. Their apparent non-partisanship, self-sacrifice, and even political inexperience emphasized the morality of the struggle against dictatorship— a struggle that had been evident in countries such as Pakistan, Myanmar, and the Philippines, to name only a few. Thompson claimed that in these conflictual contexts the politically-engaged women were reminiscent of Havel’s power of the powerless: opponents did not consider these women threatening; the foreign press celebrated their emergence; and the public viewed attacks on their character as unneeded, heartless, and ungentlemanly (Thompson 2002). Thompson thus attempts to explain the emergence of female leaders in Asia as the alignment of dynastic-charismatic authority with national contexts and gender perceptions. Writing most recently in 2017, Farida Jalalzai and Young-Im Lee help summarize the trends and enabling factors behind women’s executive advancement in Asia. Using their own study as well as previous research, these two scholars reiterate that women politicians may benefit from gender perceptions in moments of political opportunity (e.g. a struggle against dictatorship, a major electoral defeat, or an institutional scandal), and that the vast majority of 5 female executives in Asia have familial ties to former male presidents or prime ministers. Similar to Richter and Thompson, Jalalzai and Lee briefly explain that these ties help strengthen the chances of a female executive through the provision of political benefits, including a now-higher level of name recognition, press coverage, and public trust (Jalalzai and Lee 2017). That summarizes the main explanations for the emergence of women executives in Asia— a small literature produced in part by its similarly small (and recent) sample size. But while these arguments are intriguing they are far from complete; an incompleteness that I believe stems from the recurring inability to explain the timing and mechanism of these seemingly influential factors. Indeed, rather than a conclusive explanation, these studies create several continuing questions. Why do family ties seem to matter for some women candidates in political transitions (e.g. Pakistan) and not in others (e.g. Taiwan)? Why do gender perceptions seem to suddenly become influential in these transitions? Moreover, how do family ties and gender perceptions (e.g. of women as peacebuilders) specifically operate so as to contribute to the emergence of a female executive? Are these factors working below the surface, or are they explicitly manifesting in politics? How so, through which actors, and with what political effects? These questions reveal in turn a still limited understanding as to how women in Asia emerge as national leaders. In this thesis I will thus take as established a number of these common explanations for women’s rise to executive leadership, and then, by assuming a general relevance of these factors, I will enquire into the timing and mechanisms of these conditions. I aim to explore here the salience and relevance of these factors in the case of Thailand, South Korea, and Taiwan— three Asian countries that have recently elected a female leader. However, since Asia-specific research is still limited and emerging, this enquiry of mine is mostly informed by non-Asia studies. Here, we find a literature that focuses on various 6 contributing factors in an attempt to partly explain how women achieve political power (ranging from positions in the local legislature to the nation’s top executive office). In the resultant explanatory framework, scholars group contributing factors into structural, cultural, institutional, and historical conditions that then serve to positively influence a woman politician’s ascension (Reynolds 1999, Inglehart and Norris 2003, McDonagh 2009, Jalalzai 2013). Those conditions, their comprising factors, and their resultant expectations can be summarized as follows: Structural factors These factors concern the supply of eligible women contenders. In one of the landmark works on women in politics, Farida Jalalzai quantitatively and qualitatively analyzes women executives across the globe from 1960 to 2010. Her methods reveal several statistically- significant findings, one of which is that greater percentages of female legislators are positively associated with women leaders. She reasons that this factor positively aligns with women executives because it entails a supply of qualified female candidates (Jalalzai 2013).