“The election of the first female head of state is a transformative event in the history of any country.”
Ausra Park, Ph.D., has received a grant to continue her examination of what that means for five former post-Communist-bloc nations.
Park, professor of international relations, was awarded the 2023-2024 Baumanis Grant for Creative Projects in Baltic Studies from the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies. She will use the funding to travel to Tallinn, Estonia next summer to interview Kersti Kaljulaid, the country’s first woman president (2016-2021) and at age 46 also its youngest-ever head of state.
The interview will inform the fifth and final section of Park’s upcoming monograph of women presidents who headed post-Communist nations in Europe. Concluded administrations in Latvia, Lithuania, Kosovo and Croatia are also cases included in her study.
Park pointed out that the advent of a first woman president connotes that the public’s views of “who belongs” in high politics are changing.
“Although other women’s ‘firsts’ in politics are unquestionably important historical milestones—especially when women are first elected as political party heads, prime ministers, or speakers and chairs of parliament—none of these political ‘firsts’ match the significance and symbolism of having the first woman head of state,” she said.
“A female leader’s presence and gender result in powerful ripple effects signaling not only women’s arrival to, and representation in, politics, but also women’s role in, and impact on, national and global affairs.”
She said that when a woman breaks that “ultimate glass ceiling,” there are very high expectations for her – along with an unwelcome focus by the media on misogynistic messaging, sexualized disinformation and various gendered attacks.
“Unfortunately, rather than examining policy or political agenda advocated by women presidents, there is often a critical focus by the media on their appearances or mannerisms, something to which male leaders are very rarely subjected.”
Park’s interview with President Kaljulaid and her staff, as well as political experts in Estonia, will round out the political and biographical analysis of the five women presidents who have ushered in a new normal in post-Communist Europe. She will use political psychology methodology developed and widely used in American presidential politics in her work.
“It is no surprise that Dr. Park has been awarded the prestigious Baumanis grant for her innovative research,” said Christiane Farnan, Ph.D., dean of the School of Liberal Arts. “She is an exemplary teacher-scholar whose superb teaching and cutting-edge contributions to the field of international relations make her an exciting yet accessible role model for her students.”
In addition to her monograph on women leaders, Park is working on a manuscript tentatively titled Titans of the Baltic States: The First Generation of Foreign Policymakers and Their Legacies.