With a few exceptions, men have been in charge for all of human history. Where has it gotten us? Men have mostly started wars and built monuments to themselves. Men have designed the structures of industries, religions and governments to benefit themselves and their friends. Any benefits to women and children arrived via the trickle-down effect.

I was struck by the words and images of this video:

The Bahá’í Faith is the only religion I know of that strongly emphasizes a greater role for women. `Abdu’l-Bahá said:

The world in the past has been ruled by force, and man has dominated over woman by reason of his more forceful and aggressive qualities both of body and mind. But the balance is already shifting; force is losing its dominance, and mental alertness, intuition, and the spiritual qualities of love and service, in which woman is strong, are gaining ascendancy. Hence the new age will be an age less masculine and more permeated with the feminine ideals, or, to speak more exactly, will be an age in which the masculine and feminine elements of civilization will be more evenly balanced.

A cute story: Vigdis Finnbogadottir was the female president of Iceland for 16 years, until 1996. When Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, a man, was campaigning to succeed Ms. Finnbogadottir, a 12-year-old girl asked her mother, “Momma, do they allow men to be president?”

When I started looking for a photo to accompany this post, I found this article in Wikipedia, List of elected or appointed female heads of state. I was pleasantly surprised that there had been so many. I wonder when the countries that are currently warring economically will advance to the point where they are able to elect a person with “mental alertness, intuition, and the spiritual qualities of love and service.”