A Woman as Commander in Chief: Could America Cope?
In an exclusive column for Byline Supplement, Bonnie Greer asks if the US is ready to accept its first female head of state
It is easy to forget that the rather nondescript photos and portraits on the wall along the grand staircase at Number 10, the Prime Minister’s residence, are images of Prime Ministers past.
Included along the wall, are the portraits of three women: Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May, and Liz Truss – her term so brief that she can be compared to a short-term royal head of state, Jane Seymour.
The pictures of these women hang there as matter-of-factly, as nonchalantly, as all the rest of the portraits and photos of the “great and the good” that adorn the walls of Power.
As far as I can ascertain from my over three decades of living here, women at the top are taken in the national stride. Not so much in the military, but in politics, they’re there.
Now we also have the possibility that the Leader of The Opposition will be a woman of African descent. Most of the uproar will be about her right-wing politics, more than her gender. All of this will be taken in the national stride.
That all of these women, Prime Ministers and a potential one, come from the party on the right – the Conservatives – and that this Black woman, the MP Kemi Bradenoch, is on the right of the Conservative party and comfortable as the self-described “anti-Woke” candidate is also something that the nation will take in its stride.
Perhaps it is because Great Britain – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – is used to women at the top of the government tree. Queens regnant, that is, sovereign.
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