Ardern’s battle against sexism
PM pushes back as example to young women
Walking to and from the Beehive in early March helped Jacinda Ardern stay in touch with the mood of the public in deciding to put the country into lockdown, she has revealed.
The Prime Minister yesterday accepted the 2020 Gleitsman International Activist Award from the Harvard Kennedy School’s Centre for Public Leadership. Previous winners include civil rights leaders American congressman John Lewis and South African President Nelson Mandela.
Ardern took part in a virtual ceremony from her Beehive office where her leadership, particularly in response to the Covid-19 crisis and last year’s March 15 terror attack, was honoured.
She also took questions from students and revealed that she suffered from imposter syndrome, and that she had to learn to push back against sexism — and did so for the sake of the impression it would leave on young women if she didn’t.
An important part of her leadership was staying in tune with her instincts, she said, especially in light of the modern political environment filled with data about voter preferences and non-stop focus groups.
“Often in politics we succumb to this idea that we need to reflect what the public expect of us or re-design ourselves to fulfil expectations. In the course of doing that, very often we start to doubt, question or ignore our own instincts.”
She then spoke of early March, when modelling was showing New Zealand on the brink of Covid devastation.
“We were all having to move very quickly to ensure we weren’t devastated by large outbreaks. Often 48 hours made all the difference.
“We knew we were going to have to take significant steps into a fairly aggressive form of lockdown.”
But that decision was also informed by her short daily walks from Premier House to the Beehive and back.
“Seeing people loading large bags of flour in the car, hearing conversations on the street — I could sense the fear.
“That meant we had to lift our communications, make it very direct, share everything that we knew about the virus, create a plan so people knew that if we saw X, we had to do Y.
“A lot of that was just based on our proximity to what we were seeing in our families and what I was seeing on my walk home from work.”
Ardern also talked about how she had to grow into the kind of person who pushed back when TV host Mark Richardson asked her about whether she could be PM as well as have a baby in 2017.
She recalled when she was a front bench Opposition MP and a cartoon came out in a Southland newspaper depicting her as a boxing ring round girl in stilettos.
The caption, Ardern said, was that an appropriate job needed to be found for her.
“It was pretty demeaning and pretty awful.”
A journalist called her for comment, but she didn’t want to make much of it.
“I was worried at being portrayed as humourless or too sensitive, so the only comment I had was something terribly lame — ‘Surely the good people of Southland deserve better cartoons’.”
She realised she was shying away from pushing back.
“But then I started to wonder about what other young women would think if they saw some of that treatment, and think that if they went into politics they would experience some of that too — maybe I did need to speak up.
“It’s been a journey for me. I want to be a good leader, not a good female leader.
“But I also take very seriously the responsibility that I cannot just ignore those things when they happen. Other women are watching. Young girls are watching. I do have a duty of care — but I haven’t always felt that way.”
Ardern said the stereotypical leadership traits of politicians included assertiveness, confidence, reassurance — “almost brash” — an ego, and probably someone older and male with grey hair.
Because of that bias, young women often didn’t see themselves as political leadership potential, she said. “That’s something I want to change.”
A diverse Parliament was an important step but so was diversity in leadership styles.
She said it was no surprise that young people shied away from a career in politics because it can be a harsh environment.
“I believed this myself. Politics was a place you could do good, but I didn’t believe it was a place I could survive. When I got here, I believed that. You can and indeed you must be your own kind of leader.”
The award comes with US$150,000 ($212,000), which Ardern has put towards a scholarship for a New Zealand student at Harvard Kennedy School.
Centre for Public Leadership director and practice of public leadership professor Wendy R Sherman said Ardern had wielded a “steady and swift hand, an open mind, and a keen reflection of her entire community in meeting challenges of terror, earthquakes and Covid-19”.
She said Ardern was a model of “strength and humility”, even though she was not much older than some Harvard students.
It was pretty demeaning and pretty awful. Jacinda Ardern