Obama's interviewer - former Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop - replied, saying female leaders would only need six months. Data, however, shows that even the far more modest goal of parity between the sexes in global leadership remains distant.
Fewer than a third of the UN's 193 member states have ever had a female leader and, while there has been a huge proportional rise in women at the top of global politics in the past 20 years, the numbers remain incredibly low.
Only 12 UN member states have female leaders, down from 17 in 2022. Research from UN Women suggests that gender equality at the highest positions of power will not be reached for 130 years. The growth in the number of female leaders has plateaued.
In January, Jacinda Ardern resigned as prime minister of New Zealand saying she "no longer had enough in the tank" to do the job. Moldova's Natalia Gavrilita quit as prime minister in February, blaming crises caused by "Russian aggression". Nicola Sturgeon stood down in February after more than eight years as Scotland's first minister, saying the "time was right".
This month, Sanna Marin - the world's youngest prime minister - lost a closely fought election in Finland.
Denne historien er fra April 14, 2023-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Denne historien er fra April 14, 2023-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
We're making a music video-but I can't play, or even act
I am in a lifeboat station on the south coast, standing beneath the stern of a rescue vessel, wearing a borrowed fisherman's jumper and holding a banjo. There are lights on me, and I am very much at sea.
BOOKS OF THE MONTH
The best translated fiction
Village people A chilly tone of doom infects these unsettling folk tales, following a settlement from the deep past to near future
The quintessential \"bad place\" is one of the staples of horror fiction. For Stephen King, the bad place - think the Overlook Hotel in The Shining - usually acts as a repository for a long-forgotten evil or injustice to resurface.
A labour of love Haruki Murakami revisits a hypnotic city of dreams and a tale of teen sweethearts, in material he's worked on over four decades
The elegiac quality of Haruki Murakami's new novel, his first in six years, was perhaps inevitable considering its origins. The City and Its Uncertain Walls began as an attempt to rework a 1980 story of the same title, originally published in the Japanese magazine Bungakukai, which Murakami, unsatisfied, never allowed to be republished or translated.
Leading questions The former German chancellor slights her enemies by barely mentioning them-and is frustratingly opaque on her own big calls
Towards the end of her 16-year tenure, former German chancellor Angela Merkel was garlanded with superlative titles: the \"queen of Europe\", the \"most powerful woman in the world\".
Double vision
Is the pay really that good? Do you get bored? We ask 'David Brent', 'Nessa' and 'Ali G' what it's like to make money as the lookalike of a comic creation
Robopop Teen star who does not exist
Miku is a 'Vocaloid' -a holographic avatar that represents a digital bank of vocal samples-performing sellout tours for thousands of very real mega-fans
The show must go wrong
How did a farce about a gaffe-filled amateur dramatic whodunnit become one of Britain's greatest ever exports, the toast of dozens of countries?
Europe's latest radical populist typifies a swing on the continent
Politics in Romania can be a bloody business, especially on the right. The excesses of the Iron Guard, an insurrectionary, violently antisemitic, ultranationalist 1930s political-religious militia, stood out even at a time when fascist parties were wreaking havoc in Germany, Italy and Spain. Given what is happening in Europe today, the events of that period are instructive.
It's high time to tax cannabis and fix French finances
France might not be broke, but the state of its public finances is, well, definitely not good. Total debt stands at €3.2tn ($3.4tn) - 112% of GDP. Interest payments on that debt are the second largest public expenditure after education (which includes everything from crêche, or preschool, to universities) and are higher than the amount spent on defence. And this year's budget deficit is projected to be 6%, three points above the EU's 3% limit.
