Antonio Guterres takes the Oath of Office at UN. Credit: Luiz Rampelotto SIPA USA/PA Images
Last fall, many of us watched closely as the occasion of selecting the ninth Secretary-General of the United Nations ushered in unprecedented public demand for the world’s first female — and feminist — leader of the international body, one who would recognize and tackle head on entrenched patriarchal norms, violence and discrimination both within and outside of the U.N. system.
A feminist leader at the head of the U.N. is not only essential if we are to achieve the Global Goals and the United Nations’s founding principles of human rights, peace and dialogue, but also critical at a time of increased, and worrying, global trends in nationalism, xenophobia and crackdowns on women’s rights. And while the continual rotation of geographic regions from which the world’s top diplomat has been plucked has led to a system highly effective at ensuring equitable geographic representation of the preceding secretaries-general, no such measure has existed for gender representation.
