Mary Ann Sieghart: Giving women power requires action

Published: Wednesday, November 02, 2011

Are women great at running the country? You bet.

Four monarchs were voted into the top 25 of the BBC's Greatest Britons of all time. Three of them - Elizabeth I, Victoria and Elizabeth II - were female. Alfred the Great was the only King, and he didn't even govern the whole of England.

Yet before women found their way on to the throne, there was huge resistance to the idea of a reigning Queen. Back in the 12th century, Henry I decreed that his crown should pass to his only surviving child, the indomitable Matilda. But when he died, her cousin Stephen seized the throne. Undeterred, she fought, and won, a five-year civil war.

But, as she prepared to be crowned in Westminster Abbey, Londoners rose up against her and forced her to flee. Why? As the author of the hostile GestaStephani wrote at the time: "She at once put on an extremely arrogant demeanour instead of the modest gait and bearing proper to the gentle sex and began to walk and speak and do all things more stiffly and more haughtily than she had been wont."

Click here to read the full Independent article....