The Woman President Leadership, law and legacy for Women Based on Experiences from South and Southeast Asia

Too much attention is paid to the absence of women leaders around the world rather than their presence, leaving a gap in our understanding of the difference women leaders make on the lives of fellow women. The Woman President presents a unique comparative study of women's leadership and the law, offering new ways for understanding the impact of female presidential leadership on women's everyday lives by analysing the legal legacies of four women presidents: Corazon Aquino (1986-1992), Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (2001-2010), Megawati Sukarnoputri (2001-2004), and Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga (1994-2005).

It uses a new and innovative methodology, the Gender Legislative Index, to score laws enacted during these four tenures from a women's rights perspective. The findings challenge and expand our understanding of what constitutes a woman's issue, bringing within its gendered analysis labour law reform, democracy, anti-corruption, poverty-alleviation, and pro-peace interventions, alongside more oft-considered terrain such as gender-based violence, reproductive rights, gender equality quotas, and women's rights at work. This book also offers important insights into the institutional and social mechanisms that enable women leaders to lead for women, including women's movements and global networks of women presidents and prime ministers. The words of women leaders themselves-both from personal interviews and speeches-bring depth to the assessments and conclusions drawn. The Woman President offers new tools and sharpens old ones to provide an essential comparative contribution to our knowledge about the dynamics and impact of female presidencies, drawing from the realities of the Asia region.

Ramona Vijeyarasa, Senior Lecturer, University of Technology Sydney

Ramona Vijeyarasa is the architect behind the Gender Legislative Index, the first comprehensive IT-based tool to make legislation work more effectively to improve women's lives. Her work innovatively combines law, engineering, and data science to reinvigorate decades-long debates about the law's
role in addressing gender inequality. A Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the University of Technology Sydney, Ramona's research is informed by a decade working in civil society. Ramona was the 2020-2022 Women's Leadership Institute Australia Research Fellow, a Runner-up in the 2021 Letten
Prize, and has research grants and awards from New York University, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

1. Introduction: Women Political Leaders-Expanding Our Knowledge with New Eyes and New Purpose
2. A Framework for Analysing the Legal Legacies of Women Leaders: Key Concepts, Questions, and Approaches
3. How Presidents Shape the Law: A Taxonomy
4. Measuring the Legislative Footprint
5. The Instrumentalization of Gender by, for, and Against the Woman President: A Double-Edged Sword
6. Leading for Women: Bringing Women's Issues to the Legislative Table
7. Roadblocks for Women: The Woman Leader, Conservative Politics, and Regression on Women's Rights
8. Outside the Box: Crediting Women Leaders for Benefiting Women in Less Visible Ways
9. The President and the People: Women's Movements and Their Role in Fusing Gender Into the Legal System
10. Women Leaders in the International Landscape: Bastions of Gender Equality?
11. Conclusion: Going Beyond Women Presidents in South and Southeast Asia
Appendix 1: 97 Laws Evaluated by the Gender Legislative Index
Appendix 2: Additional Laws Considered in The Woman President
Appendix 3: List of Key Informant Interviews