Jacinda Ardern needs a break. Can you blame her? Irish weather

[ad_1]

A tearful Jacinda Ardern had barely finished announcing her decision to step down as New Zealand Prime Minister when, precisely as she predicted, speculation began about the real reason for her departure.

The New York Times pointed out that she had struggled to move beyond her association with pandemic politics. Threats from the far right have been mentioned. The word burnout appeared in several tracks, although she never used it herself. His popularity has declined in the polls, some say. She was jumping now to avoid imminent defeat in the next election. The Telegraph decided she had been overcome by her own vanity and could no longer cope with the loss of her halo.

BBC World Asked: Jacinda Ardern Quits: Can Women Really Have It All? The question seemed to view women in politics as a fun novelty and was deservedly ridiculed online, before the offending headline and tweet were removed.

It is depressing how one woman’s experience in public life continues to be viewed as a proxy for the experience of all women. It’s hard to imagine anyone asking the same question of a male leader, even with seven (almost) children. Boris Johnson quits: Can men really have it all? wouldn’t get many clicks.

The answer is the same for women as it is for men, with perhaps a few additional considerations. You can have it all, but maybe not forever. You can do anything, but you may not always want to. Few experts seemed to agree that the answer was as simple as Ardern had insisted. I know what this job takes, and I know I don’t have enough left in the tank to do it justice. It’s as simple as that.

I look forward to spending time with my family again, she added. Speaking directly to her partner and daughter, she added: In Neve, mum can’t wait to be there when you start school this year. And to Clarke, let’s finally get married.

Why is it so hard for experts to accept that this is it? That after five years of leading a country of more than five million people through a pandemic, a terrorist attack, an earthquake and the birth of her first child, she needs a break. Maybe it’s because, for a certain type of powerful man, spending more time with family has often been seen as code that I’m about to be fired or arrested. These days, it’s less unusual for high-profile men to quit big jobs because they really want to spend more time at home. Yet in our achievement-obsessed society, less unusual remains dishearteningly rare.

So there’s something refreshing about the no-frills honesty of Arderns’ statement. And yet, it would be preemptive and more than a little reductive to say that feminism’s work is done, give her a pat on the back and wish her well at the school bake sale.

[ Opinion: Jacinda Arderns graceful departure is the personification of modern democratic ideals ]

Personalization and slander

Another, arguably more revealing line of his statement was largely ignored at first. The only interesting angle you will find is that after six years of great challenges, I am human. A pause of a few nanoseconds, then: politicians are human. We give everything we can, for as long as we can, then its time.

Politicians are human. She didn’t add, but maybe she should have: female politicians are human. There was a time when the public didn’t need reminders about it. Ardern denied threats and abuse were a factor in his decision, but they were unquestionably a factor in his life. She was the subject of 50 threats investigated by police in 2021. Her co-Maori party leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, slammed Arderns’ decision to oust her from office for constant personalization and defamation.

You don’t have to be a world leader to experience this kind of vitriol and hatred, if the stories recently told by five Irish women in politics to my colleague Jennifer Bray are any indication. The five described in great detail the price they paid to represent their community. A WhatsApp voice note that read: I’m going to piss on you. Pictures of body parts. A shell at the back door. Getting yelled at in the street. In one case, nine years of abuse and lies. They spoke of having to install CCTV cameras in their homes, of warning other women about politics, of being advised not to hold constituency clinics without supervision.

It’s not a solid debate. It’s not holding people accountable. This comment is not fair. It is the behavior of a dangerous and disturbed mob that threatens democracy. And it happens across the political spectrum. Holly Cairns spoke in a Virgin Media podcast about an online stalker coming to her home. I don’t regret running for office, she said. But honestly, if I had known…probably, no, I wouldn’t have.

Lynn Ruane told RT Radio about her experience of burnout amid the pressures of public life. Elsewhere in The Irish Times, Maria Bailey tells Simon Carswell how her family put her on suicide watch following the 2019 swinging door controversy. I just became unrecognizable. I was just a laughing stock, she said.

If we don’t start listening to what these women are saying, Irish society will pay the price. If we want to attract good people who represent the full spectrum of the population, we have to treat them like good people. Forget it: we just have to treat them like people. We must stop dehumanizing politicians.

Can women have it all in light of Jacinda Arderns’ resignation, some media have asked, as if it were the heyday of 1973. They can. But in the case of women in politics, it’s harder than ever to see why they would want to.

[ad_2]