ABSTRACT
In point of fact, women are rarely found in leadership roles. Even when they are present in management positions, they almost never reach the top of the hierarchy. When they reach the summit of a hierarchy and fail to succeed, women are less apt to be criticized than men. “After all,” the primatologist G. Mitchell comments on this subject, “women are not supposed to be good leaders”. The political arena, where game of power is played par excellence, appears almost everywhere to be reserved to men. As for women’s right to vote, it was more the result of wars and the desire of some male politicians to acquire female votes than of the campaigns of the suffragettes. All of this tends to underscore the female sex’s relative lack of interest in political life. A remarkable fact is that, with rare exceptions like Margaret Thatcher, more women have been monarchs, a position inherited from inside the family, than democratically elected leaders.
