Angela Merkel, Jacinda Ardern, Nicola Sturgeon: very different paths with a common awareness: the scepter of power at a certain point “is no longer worth it”
Thinking about it, it started with Angela Merkel. In 2021 the Christian-Democratic chancellor who had made the history of Germany and Europe for 16 years could reapply, but she did not and eclipsed herself. Last January, New Zealander Jacinda Ardern, Labor leader since 2017, said she had “no more petrol in the tank and had slept well for the first time in a long time” only after resigning. Now it is the pro-independence premier Nicola Sturgeon who has given up after eight years and rejected the chalice of martyrdom that the other queen of Scotland accepted with proud self-denial – but they were other times, other standards and that was Maria Stuarda. Paths, visible and underground, very different with a common awareness: the scepter of power, the one to which men tend to cling for life except for electoral catastrophes but even there it is not said, at a certain point “it is no longer worth it”. When you get to this point depends on circumstances and physique du rôle. In the cases of Ardern and Sturgeon, after controversies and avalanches of personal attacks amplified by disintermediated and violent communication: Jacinda targeted by no-vaxes and even the target of death threats for the firearms regulation project, Nicola contested for the law on sex reassignment from the age of 16 and for the case of the rapist who ended up in a women’s prison after declaring himself trans. Due to the difficulties of recent months, the Scottish woman has been accused by the establishment and by former comrades in the struggle of having compromised the entire independence battle that is finally at the center of the political agenda. And precisely with the desire to preserve the cause and entrust it to less polarizing leaders, as well as with the tiredness of a load carried in blissful solitude, Sturgeon explained the step backwards: «Being prime minister had a profound physical and mental impact on me . And politics is brutal.” So far, net of mistakes and defeats that are still part of the game and in a public discourse that has already reappropriated fragility for some time now, the positive side: those who leave know that they cannot give more. Consistency, responsibility, spirit of service. A question, however, makes its way between the lines of the official statements. Why, from politics to everything else, does this system of power – the System – wear women down so much more?
Maybe because we haven’t changed it yet. It is always the dear old vertical order on a human scale built on rules, times, habits, automatisms and simple male preferences. That requires us to let ourselves be assimilatedby conviction or convenience it doesn’t matter, renouncing or reducing or even just suspending one’s own irreducible otherness for a period of life. Because despite the endless monologue on the duty to “equalize” rights, opportunities, salaries (hope is the last to die), reality remains odd, with a fundamental gap between men and women in the way of reading the world, setting priorities, marking time. It doesn’t change much that at the origin of irreconcilable visions, which could be complementary, there are culture or biology. That reassuring, deep-rooted, sneaky reduction of women to a function remainsas in the best patriarchal tradition: the System recognizes based on the role and the role must be functional to the project of others. Not yours.
It is the fear of masculinization of the feminine made explicit by Elena Ferrante in the recent interview with Paolo Giordano on 7
. How does it come out? The first step is to talk about it, to acquire and strengthen awareness that it is possible to guide, direct, shape the world in a new, freer and, yes, more ours way. Especially when that world seems irreversibly devoted to a development model centered on the dematerialization of reality and the dehumanization of relationships. It will not be a coincidence that when they said goodbye, both Jacinda and Nicola said the same words: “I am a human being” (Angela didn’t go that far).
February 15, 2023 (change February 15, 2023 | 17:23)
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