The Next Big Thing

Look around! Women leaders are everywhere: German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Christine Lagarde of the International Monetary Fund, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. Then our three Nobel Peace laureates: Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and activists Leymah Gbowee, also of Liberia, and Tawakkol Karman of Yemen.

It’s hard not to be inspired!

Until you start thinking about it. We’ve seen patterns like this before … Too many skirts, and the trousers take a walk! Prestige and influence (and salaries!) fall. It’s happened to pharmacists and psychotherapists-, in publishing, real estate and public relations.

But heads of state? Since when have men given up power so easily? There must be a loophole! (Sound of cog wheels turning...)

That’s it! The men don’t want these jobs any more! Think about it: Who wants to be head of state when the societies are a mass of tensions and the economies on the edge of collapse?

You can just hear the bravado at the bar: “Yes sir! What a time we had!” A joy ride of high stakes and conquest, gunning the motor into overdrive and heading for the horizon. So what if they skipped the occasional service check – that’s just a con job for mechanics, anyway – while they ripped off the pressure gauges and ran the wondrous old post-war economy straight into the ground.

“No problem,” you can hear the men congratulating each other, arm over shoulder and glass in hand. “The girls will clean up the mess.” Anyway, they’ve got to get on to the Next Big Thing.

The trouble is, it’s getting harder to figure out just what that could possibly be.

Originalky published in the Vienna Review 27/10/2011