-For this, my final blog, I have chosen to look at Africa, and its history with female leaders. The most interesting person that I found is President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. President Johnson-Sirleaf is the current leader of Liberia, and is the first elected female head in Africa. It is important not to confuse that she was the first female leader. She was the first elected female leader of Africa. I found not only the history of Liberia to be interesting, (which also explains her name), but also Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's own background to be very interesting.
As with the other continents I have focused on, I found some other women to highlight in this post. They include: Luisa Diogo, Ruth Perry, and Elisabeth Domitien. They headed Mozambique, Liberia, and The Central African Republic, respectively. The first two links that I will add to the blog are about President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, and the rest are pages about the other in their respective order.
This blog has been a learning experience for me. It was a lot harder to find reliable information on female leaders in other parts of the world than it was to find info on people like Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin, which is why a lot of this blog is about them. I also learned how to use a blog, which will be useful in the future. Thanks!

http://www.joinafrica.com/africa_of_the_week/ellenjohnsonliberia.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/africa/4395978.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luisa_Diogo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Perry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Domitien

This website (the first link listed) has been a very helpful starting place in research for this blog. It gives links to many sites, and updated new on what is happening with female leaders in the world today. Two good ones that are up right now are the one on the UN survey and the News Hour one on Israel. The UN link gives a chapter breakdown on some details about what women face when in a leadership position. This is just an article on the last Israeli election, but it is current information on a woman in a leadership position. There have been many helpful websites, but I think this one is a good starting point for somebody wanting to learn more about females in leadership roles in the world in general.
Following in my theme of looking up female leaders in different regions of the world, I decided to look at the greater Asia area this week. I again started with the website that I talked about earlier (the second link), which is a fairly current list of women in power now and women in power in the past. I also like to look at the past, because it gives a sort of history of female leadership. Like last time, I will give links to pages about these leaders. I know they are just Wikipedia links, but those pages lead to other pages that you can learn on. The countries involved will have links in the order given: The Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, and South Korea.

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/437/index.html
http://www.filibustercartoons.com/charts_rest_female-leaders.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Macapagal-Arroyo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corazon_Aquino
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratibha_Patil
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indira_Gandhi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrika_Kumaratunga
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirimavo_Bandaranaike
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Myung_Sook

-This week, following my idea of focusing on female leaders by continent, I decided to focus on Central and South America. I started by focusing on a current woman in power, President Michelle Bachelet, who is president of Chile. I included a web page from BBC that gives a brief account of her history before and during her presidency. It seems that she won the election fairly, and runs the government without serious corruption, which says a lot when other female leaders in the history Central and South America are looked at.
After looking at Michelle Bachelet, I searched other female leaders. I found four others using the previous website I found on past and present women leaders. All four of the other female leaders had something fishy about their terms, or they weren’t allowed into office, as was the case with Rosalia Arteaga. I also found the case with Beatriz Merino to be interesting, as it seemed she was moved out of office due to her being suspected of being lesbian. I think this sort of ties into the class well because it shows the barriers that not only women have, but the barriers that GLBT has. I have included links about all of the past and present leaders in Central and South America.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4087510.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabel_Peron
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mireya_Moscoso
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosal%C3%ADa_Arteaga
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatriz_Merino

I chose this article for two reasons. One was that it is related to Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany and a female leader. It was my focus this week to look into female leaders in Europe. The second reason I chose this article is because it relates to the IMF, or the International Monetary Fund. We talked about the IMF in class when we watched the movie in relation to the book Global Women. I thought that this made this article a little more interesting because it not only involved a female leader, but also a controversial agency that we discussed in class.
I am also putting in an article that is not so recent, but also interesting. It is from 2004, and it again relates to both my blog topic and the class. It focuses on a female leader in Europe, Irish President Mary McAleese, and HIV/AIDS, which we have been talking about extensively in class. UNICEF gathered in Dublin, Ireland for their annual meeting and Mary McAleese had some things to say, as well as some other key people in the article. I am glad I was able to find two articles that involved both a female leader and something we have talked about in class.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2008-10-30-2212032199_x.htm -article about Angela Merkel and the IMF


http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/ireland_key_speaker.html -article involving Mary McAleese and HIV/AIDS - UNICEF

In the first part of the blog, I was focusing on Sarah Palin because of the election year and because she is a woman running for a prominent position in the United States government. Now that it is almost Election Day, I have decided to turn my attention to the other aspect of my blog, which is female leaders world-wide. I have done research on past and present female leaders, trying to find out how they came to power and how they were or are received by the people. I will also focus on elected power rather than inherited power.
What I would like to do in the upcoming weeks of the blog is to focus on female leaders in each region of the world: Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, and the Pacific. I think there will be both similarities, but mostly differences in how women got into leadership positions and even more in how they were received by the people.
I know that a video clip was supposed to be embedded in this week’s blog, but I had a hard time finding a good video clip that would have anything to do with how the leader came into their leadership role. Most of them were on specific issues related to their country or things that had nothing to do with their leadership role. So instead, I found a good website that is sort of an overview, and will get more specific as the weeks go on about each region.
http://www.filibustercartoons.com/charts_rest_female-leaders.php

-A relevant website that is connected to my blog and that I have used many times in my blog is the National Public Radio website, or www.npr.org. I have found this website to be very useful because it covers a lot on both campaigns and is a very reliable source to learn from. Something else that is good about NPR is that they have articles that they have written and also articles that are taken from other sources. Even if the articles are from other sources, you can still know that they are reliable, and it makes a search for information a lot easier. There is not really a main focus of this website other than news. It provides world and local news, environmental news, health news, business news, and even entertainment news. For this blog, I have been using it for election news, but in discovering this website, I go to NPR for my news on many other things. It is very useful.
There are a couple articles I would like to comment on. I have posted both of them on this blog. What I find interesting about these two articles is that they are news stories that you listen too instead of read. I think this is great because it gives more emotion to the article and it is sometimes easier to follow than reading something that may not be word for word. I also think it helps my blog because it gives the reader something a little more interesting.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96019313 -This is just an interesting article.

-So far in discussing Sarah Palin, I have focused on her as appealing to the vote of women in the United States. Though many say this is the reason she was chosen to be a running mate to John McCain, there may be some other reasons that people might not think of. One of these strong reasons could be her appeal to small town and rural America. Since she is currently governor of Alaska, she would be in touch with the small town feeling because there aren’t any large cities in Alaska.
Though she may appeal to the women in the United States because she would be a woman in a high leadership position for the country, I think there are other aspects to Sarah Palin that I and maybe others had not thought about. Was she chosen only for the female vote? I am not sure, but I think she is not only capturing the attention of American female voters, but also of people all across rural and small town America. Even while thinking about this, I will still focus on her appeal to women, but this week, I was unable to find anything reliable on that subject, so to keep on a female leader, I thought to look at Sarah Palin from another view.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95664781

SNL Skit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdDqSvJ6aHc

-Yes, this SNL skit with “featuring” Sarah Palin and Hilary Clinton is very funny; everybody laughs when they see it. But could this skit somehow send a poor message about female leaders? This is a question I have heard somebody ask, so I thought about it. I have seen this skit many times online and even on the news channels. When I first watched it, I just laughed and thought, “Wow that is pretty funny.” But then I thought about it and wondered. Could this make the idea of female leaders look bad? True, the goal of the skit was probably to make Sarah Palin look bad and stupid, but I think that both actors portrayed both their characters as sort of bad and stupid. Yes, it is a comedy, but it can still impact people in a poor way. Both potential leaders are on screen, giving stupid or sarcastic answers to issues. I think that though this is a comedy of Sarah Palin and Hilary Clinton, it may be based off the true opinions of some. Even with all this analysis, I have decided that overall this skit does not truly hurt the idea of a female leader in the United States. I think people ask the question more because this is a big year for female candidates. But in all the presidential races, there are skits, comics, or ads that make fun of whoever is running. There are even these same things made against people who are in office. Overall, it does not affect people’s true views, it is just something to laugh at.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94412886

-This is just something interesting I found. When you click on it, it just looks like a short article, but you need to listen to interview in the top left corner.
I thought this interview was very interesting because it gives the view of two women from both the Republican and the Democrat side. It looks into if she was a good governer in Alaska and whether or not she is ready or even good for the position of Vice President or possibly President. I thought that both sides had good arguments. Next, I will be looking for what is said after the Vice Presidential debate.

Sarah Palin

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94663916

-I think Sarah Palin is a very central figure to my blog topic because not only is she running for a very high leadership position of Vice President in the United States government, but she is very controversial among women. I have included this web link to National Public Radio in my blog for this week because it shows the controversy among women on whether or not she has been a good leader as governor of Alaska and whether they think she would make a good Vice President. One of the main things I will be looking for at first is whether or not the female vote really changed drastically from Democrat to Republican with Hillary Clinton losing in the primaries to Barak Obama and Sarah Palin being appointed as running mate to John McCain. I am still doing research on this, but I keep running to sites that I cannot be certain are true and trustworthy.
I plan to focus on this aspect of my blog until Election Day in the beginning of November, following on how the female vote sways, and then start to look at female leaders worldwide and how they have succeeded. In the meantime, I will be doing a lot more research on the Clinton vs. Palin aspect and posting more frequently. I have found the National Public Radio (NPR) website has some great and trustworthy articles on Sarah Palin herself. Now I need to work on the possible change in votes since Clinton lost. I thought that I would get this up on Sarah Palin as a start to give a base on how women view her. When you read it, I think it would be a good idea to check out the other articles on this topic that NPR links to. Next will be articles on Hillary Clinton and the possible change in votes.

Introduction

This topic occurred to me because of some of the new things happening this election year. It was the closest that a woman came to being a primary candidate in the Presidential election, even though Hilary Clinton did not make it as the primary candidate for the Democrat Party. Also, the Republican Party has nominated Sarah Palin as their Vice President candidate. This got me thinking about female leaders, not just in the United States, but throughout the world. I want to look into their stories of becoming a leader, such as what it took to get there. I also want to research what other women have done in both the United States and the world, to see their fellow women in a leadership position. An example of this is that some women in the United States are changing their vote from Democrat to Republican. Could it be because of Sarah Palin? Is the getting the so called “female vote” just because she is a woman running for the second highest position in this country?
I also want to look at women leadership around the globe because my major is global government. I want to look at how often it happens, where it happens, and what it took for them to get there. I am very curious about how it is accepted in other cultures and regions. I hope to find a lot of information on this and to maybe link to other blogs that talk about the global aspect. I am looking forward to hearing from other people on this subject and doing some research to look into these things that I would have otherwise kept putting off. I am excited for this blog because it gives me a chance to research something that has been an interest to me for some time now.