The race to select the next United Nations secretary-general has started. As of December 2025, 108 member states, noting that the organization has never been led by a woman, publicly encouraged countries to nominate women for the role. But they often prefaced the word “women” with “qualified.”
A joint statement by 10 Asian countries in February this year urged that “Member states should . . . nominate qualified women candidates to foster a more inclusive and diverse leadership at the helm of the UN.”
Last September, Denmark said that it was “encouraging member states to put forward qualified female candidates.” In November, Thailand expressed hope that “qualified female candidates” would be nominated. Brazil called for a “qualified woman from the Latin American and Caribbean region” to be chosen. (On Feb. 2, Brazil, Chile and Mexico endorsed Michelle Bachelet, a former two-time president of Chile, as a candidate for secretary-general this year.)
This essay compares the work experience of past secretaries-general with that of female and male candidates who ran for the office in 2016, offering lessons for the current race. Our research shows that women candidates were just as experienced in government leadership roles as the men who ran in the race 10 years ago and had more experience in international organizations, civil society and the private sector. The evidence from our work raises the question: When will women be considered good enough? |
Past candidates’ qualifications
We conducted a review of the professional backgrounds of all past secretaries-general and the 13 candidates in 2016. Our study measured individuals’ years of work experience across four sectors: government, international organizations, civil society and the private sector. For past UN leaders, we examined their experiences before their appointment.
This career-path reconstruction was based on publicly available sources. For past secretaries-general, some of whom were born before World War I, the information is inconsistent on the Internet about the type, level and duration of jobs the men held before taking office of the UN post. Biographies and memoirs were used to reconstruct their résumés. For recent secretaries-general and the 2016 candidates, careers are complex, with frequent job and position changes across government, international organizations, civil society and the private sector over time. Many individuals held overlapping appointments during their careers, for instance, on advisory boards of government or civil society institutions while employed in other roles.
To avoid double-counting, we identified the candidates’ primary occupations for each chronological period and highlighted — without including in the final count — any simultaneously held roles in red text. An example is given in Figure 1, which compares two of the 2016 candidates: Vuk Jeremic, a former president of the UN General Assembly, and Irina Bokova, head of Unesco at the time. However, this timeline-career reconstruction method may under-report the years of work and leadership in civil society, where demanding and important work might have been done on a voluntary basis, while holding a full-time job. |
Figure 1 Timelines of 2016 candidates |
Richer work experience
Examining candidates in 2016 and past secretaries-general shows women are equally or more qualified than men. Table 1 reveals that women averaged 16.57 years in government leadership, similar to men’s 16.67 years. Women also had more experience in international organizations: 7.86 years versus 4.08 for previous secretaries-general and 3.94 for 2016 male candidates. Women’s civil society experience was higher as well, 7.29 years compared with 5.83 and 5.25 years, respectively. Additionally, women averaged 3.29 years in the private sector, while men averaged 1.17. These numbers show that women were not only as qualified as men, but in many respects, they brought richer, broader perspectives to their careers. |
Still not good enough?
It is often said that women have to be “twice as good” as men to get the recognition they deserve. Of the seven women candidates in 2016, only two, Irina Bokova and Helen Clark, made it into the final top 5 shortlist of straw polls in the UN Security Council, from which António Guterres of Portugal was selected (and reselected five years later).
The message is unmistakable: the data suggest that the bar for women is higher, and even then, the door rarely opens. Another way of looking at the 2016 results is to surmise that the women candidates apparently did not offer the Security Council’s permanent-five members, Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, the political assurances they needed to make the top pick. In an intensely political selection process, the qualities that should count most, like independence, proven leadership and a willingness to confront entrenched power, may actually be liabilities.
The more power a woman has wielded, the more she has demonstrated that she cannot be pushed around, thus the less “safe” she may appear to be to countries seeking a secretary‑general who will not rock the boat or defy the national interests of permanent-member countries.
The world can no longer afford this dynamic. As democracy is strained and global crises are multiplying, the UN needs significant change, but it requires more than a symbolic “qualified woman.” It needs feminist leadership. It demands a leader who has fought for equal rights in her own life and for others, who has managed complex institutions at scale and is prepared to challenge the unwritten rules that keep power concentrated, pitiless and destructive of people and the planet.
Choosing a woman as the next secretary‑general is long overdue. Choosing one whose record of leadership has not been compromised by the need to placate powerful countries would be a true transformation.
Acknowledgment: Research for this article was conducted as part of a partnership between the New York University, School of Professional Studies, Center for Global Affairs, and the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP). We also thank the 1 for 8 Billion civil society coalition for their comments.
This is an opinion essay. |
|
