Strong Women in Power? “Iron Ladies” of the Baltic States

Although women presidents have become a “new political normal” in Eastern Europe since the early 2000s, astonishingly only a few single-case studies have examined female chief executives from this region. Thus, comparative analyses of the first women heads of states in the post-communist region are acutely lacking. Additionally, whereas extensive scholarship on female presidential victories in Latin America and Asia has established that “belonging to a particular family” (BPF) or having “executives’ family ties” (EFTs) provide important advantages to gaining national executive positions in these parts of the world, my research shows that neither BPF nor EFTs have any bearing in the Eastern European presidential contexts. Hence, identification of factors and variables affecting women’s pathways to the highest political power office in young post-communist democracies is urgently needed. This paper, which is part of a larger longitudinal comparative in-depth study that analyzes nine first female post-communist presidents, examines women’s performance in top executive positions, specifically focusing on female presidents from the three neighboring Baltic States: Vaira Vyke-Freiberga (Latvia), Dalia Grybauskaite (Lithuania), and Kersti Kaljulaid (Estonia). I explore the following broad, multi-layer question: What kind of impact did substantive representation of the first women presidents have on their countries and, potentially, the broader neighboring region? Specifically, in assessing a substantive representation’s effect, I examine how committed were the first women heads of state to advance gender representation and equality through direct or indirect ways in domestic and foreign policy arenas (both of which have been framed and structured on male worldviews). Towards this end, I survey and evaluate if the first women presidents showed a visible dedication to advance a feminist agenda, and how they may have used their high-level position and office to promote women-friendly policies with a goal to improve the status of women in their countries. Additionally, given that all presidential positions entail formal constitutional powers providing office holders with duties and responsibilities in foreign policy, I assess to what extent a feminist agenda and gender equity issues were visible in foreign policy that the first Baltic women presidents pursued during their tenures in office (obtained through a content analysis of presidential speeches). This study will be the first of its kind allowing comparative assessment of the first Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian women presidents’ performance in what is considered to be a male-dominated political domain.