[Editor’s Note]The Power to Change the World

The global film industry has released two unusual biopics in recent months, both chronicling the lives of living political figures. Writing the biography of a living person is a very difficult undertaking, in part because family members so often refuse to cooperate. It is especially difficult when the subject of the biography is a controversial and once-powerful political figure.

The problem is evident in The Iron Lady, which depicts the life of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Meryl Streep, for whom the film appears to have been tailor made, gives a remarkable performance as Thatcher, but viewers are offered only the most nebulous portraits of the other people in her life, excepting her father.

Issues related to the UK’s membership of the European Union and Thatcher’s growing distance from her own party make it difficult to discuss her legacy in a definitive manner, leading current British prime minister David Cameron to remark that although Streep’s performance was amazing, he was unsure why the film was made.

That Thatcher, whose father was a grocer, was able to rise from her humble beginnings to become the UK’s only female prime minister is remarkable, particularly in light of the UK’s class consciousness. Her success stemmed from her self-reliance, resolve, and political acumen rather than family connections. These traits enabled her to overcome numerous obstacles and become a national leader, international heavyweight, and historic figure.

Aung San Suu Kyi, head of Burma’s democracy movement, provides a gentler example of leadership.

The Lady, a movie about Suu Kyi authorized by her son, was four years in the making. Unable to enter Burma to film, French director Luc Besson instead gained permission to shoot in the UK home where Suu Kyi lived while at Oxford. He also used images drawn from Google Maps to create a replica in Thailand of the Burmese home in which Suu Kyi spent many years under house arrest.

When the Burmese government released Suu Kyi just as production was wrapping up, more than 30 members of the film crew applied for visas to visit her. Ultimately, only actress Michelle Yeoh, who plays Suu Kyi in the film, was granted a visa, and even she was only permitted to remain in the country for one day. Though producers worried that something might happen to Yeoh in Burma and tried to dissuade her from making the trip, the actress insisted on going. She met Suu Kyi in the latter’s study, where Suu Kyi embraced her as warmly as a family member.

These films about very different female political figures may be products of popular culture, but they have gotten people thinking about the women working in Taiwan’s political sphere.

Many people mistakenly assume that women participate in politics to a lesser degree than men because women lack political interest, understanding, and capability. But as anthropologist Margaret Mead wrote in Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, her 1930s description of her fieldwork in New Guinea, gender roles, divisions of labor, and expected behaviors are not natural principles, but cultural and social constructs. That is, the relatively low level of female political participation isn’t the “natural order of things,” but a socially constructed phenomenon.

Yet, even after half a century of struggle, there just aren’t that many female legislators in the world, much less female ministers, premiers, or presidents.

A single gender cannot lead the world on its own. We need more women with the fortitude, dedication in taking on the system, and determination to push for reforms that it takes to be a model female politician. And we should applaud the women who succeed in moving from the fringes to the pinnacle of power. They deserve it.