Women deserve the right to fail. Just like men.
There is a question many women have been whispering quietly. In corridors. In group chats. In classrooms. Across parliaments. And inside our own private reflections. A question we hesitate to voice, not because we fear the answer, but because we understand the weight of asking it. A question about our daughters, our ambitions, our movements, and the long fight that women have carried century after century. Has Samia Suluhu’s presidency shaken our faith in women-led leadership?
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It hurts to even say the words. Because for many of us, Samia was not just a president. She was proof. Proof that the door could open. That the mountain could be climbed. That the glass ceiling was not mythical after all. She was not theory. She was evidence. She was the sentence we pointed to when people said leadership was not for women.
And now, with reports of repression, fear, and political aggression forming part of her leadership story, many women feel something break quietly inside. Not simply because a leader failed. Leaders fail every day. But because we understand the cost of a woman rising. We know the scrutiny she carries. We know the world does not measure women individually.
When a man in power fails, the world says, He failed.
When a woman in power fails, the world says, Women.
That is the fracture.
That is the wound.
One woman stumbles and suddenly the whispers return.
Maybe women are not ready.
Maybe women are emotional.
Maybe women are worse.
No.
We refuse that conclusion.
Because if failure disqualified a gender from leadership, men would have stopped ruling the world centuries ago.
History is not gentle when it records the leadership of men. The Transatlantic Slave Trade was planned and defended by men. The Holocaust, where six million Jewish lives were erased, was executed under a man. The Rwandan genocide, one million lives gone in three months, was led by men. The Killing Fields of Cambodia. The brutality of Idi Amin. The mass graves of Congo under Leopold II. Men have governed violently. Loudly. Brutally.
Yet the world has never said, Men should no longer lead. Men are allowed to fail globally and still return to power. Women are allowed only one chair, and that chair must redeem the entire gender. We will not accept that. Because women, too, have led with steadiness, clarity, and a different kind of strength. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf rebuilt Liberia from the ashes of civil war.
Angela Merkel held Europe together for sixteen years, not with fear, but with careful thought. Jacinda Ardern led with compassion that did not weaken her authority, but deepened it.
Ngozi Okonjo Iweala has walked into the hardest economic rooms and commanded respect with grace and intellectual steel. Wangari Maathai restored land, politics, and the psyche of a nation.
And Sahle Work Zewde. Steady. Quiet. Strong in a region shaped by instability. Proof that leadership does not always need to roar.
These women were not symbols. They were leaders. Their excellence was not theoretical. It was lived. Leadership excellence is not guaranteed by gender.
Leadership failure is not owned by gender either.
Yes, there are women who have governed poorly.
Just as there are men who have governed poorly.
This is not gender. This is character.
Yes, there have been women who misused power. Indira Gandhi’s policies, Isabel Perón’s brutality, we cannot ignore Aung San Suu Kyi. Once celebrated as the global symbol of democracy and moral resistance. A woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize for standing up to dictatorship. A woman who became a beacon of hope for oppressed people everywhere. And yet, when she finally gained power in Myanmar, she chose silence while the Rohingya were being driven from their homes. Villages burned. Families butchered. Hundreds of thousands forced to flee into Bangladesh with nothing but the clothes on their backs. It was one of the clearest cases of ethnic cleansing in our time. And she looked away. A woman we thought embodied justice was suddenly quiet in the face of injustice. Her leadership broke many hearts. Grace Mugabe’s extravagance while her nation suffered. These failures are real. These women existed. They are real. They made choices. Bad choices. But here is the truth we must fight not to forget. Their failures are theirs. Not ours.
Leadership is always and only a mirror of character. Just as the cruelty of men in leadership has never defined all men, the failures of a few women must never sentence all women. Those failures belong to them alone. Just as the horrors committed by men have never been used to disqualify men, the failures of a few women must never be used to condemn women. Leadership is not gendered. Power does not purify. Authority does not sanctify. Leadership is always, and only, a reflection of character. Leadership has never been about gender alone. It has always been about character, vision, and moral courage.
The failures of some women belong to them.
The failures of some men belong to them.
Leadership is not holy simply because it sits on a woman’s shoulders.
Leadership is only ever a reflection of character.
But here is why this conversation cuts differently for women. When a woman rises, we do not see her alone. We see our own locked doors. Our own silenced brilliance. Our mothers bending their backs to hold homes together. Our grandmothers praying in small corners of the world. We see our own waiting.
So when a woman in power falters, it is not disappointment alone. It is grief. Because we know the world will not say, She failed. The world will say, Women.
And that is the part that is not fair.
That is the part we must refuse.
Women deserve the right to lead.
And the right to make mistakes while leading.
And the right to correct those mistakes.
Just like men.
A failed woman must not become the funeral of women. So yes. Critique Samia. Hold her accountable. Debate her policies. Evaluate her decisions with the seriousness any leader should face. That is governance. That is democracy. But do not bury the future of women because of the choices of one woman.
I have encountered remarkable leadership from men.
I have encountered disappointing leadership from men.
I have also encountered remarkable leadership from women.
And yes, I have encountered disappointing leadership from women.
This is humanity. Not gender.
I still believe in women-led leadership. Fiercely. Fully. Without apology. Not because women are inherently better, but because women deserve the same space to learn, to fail, to rise, to try again.
We cannot abandon the future because of this moment. We cannot surrender centuries of fight because of one chapter.
A failed man is just a failed man.
A failed woman must never become the obituary of women. Women deserve the right to lead with brilliance.
And the right to fail and still rise.
Just like men have done since the beginning of history. The story is not over.
The future is still ours.
And women are still rising.
The post When men fail, they’re forgiven; when women fail, we pay, by Stephanie Shaaakaa appeared first on Vanguard News.
