If you were to ask me what is the greatest crisis facing the modern world — apart from the failure of education — I would say the lack and perversion of leadership. On the one hand, we have the strongmen — Donald J. Trump, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Mohammed bin Salman, Nicolas Maduro and Rodrigo Duterte. On the other, the besieged rationalists — Emmanuel Macron, Justin Trudeau and Angela Merkel.

To Merkel, we must add a number of other female leaders who’ve emerged on the world stage — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, playing a tricky hand brilliantly through the government shutdown-showdown, her encounters with her fractious caucus, the disheartening release of the Mueller report and now the latest attack on Obamacare; New Zealand’s Jacinda Adhern, who’s been a magnificent example of grace in the face of the white supremacist attack on the Muslims of her nation; Scotland’s Nicola Sturgeon, a steadying hand on the till as she guides her country through the rough waters of Brexit; and now Slovakiia’s first woman president, Zuzana Čaputová, who ran on the platform “Stand Up to Evil.”

In the March 31 edition of The New York Times, Tina Brown wonders if women might not be better leaders than men.

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