Former President Barack Obama said there would be “significant improvement across the board” if countries were led by women, BBC News reported Monday.
“Now women, I just want you to know; you are not perfect, but what I can say pretty indisputably is that you’re better than us (men),” the former commander in chief said Monday, while speaking at the Singapore Expo. “I’m absolutely confident that for two years, if every nation on Earth was run by women, you would see a significant improvement across the board on just about everything … living standards and outcomes.”
An Obama adviser confirmed the report to CNN.
Obama also said during the expo that he would not take another political leadership role.
“If you look at the world and look at the problems, it’s usually old people, usually old men, not getting out of the way,” he said. “It is important for political leaders to try and remind themselves that you are there to do a job, but you are not there for life, you are not there in order to prop up your own sense of self-importance or your own power.”
Obama’s comments, which come as the 2020 Democratic presidential primary intensifies, drew considerable attention, considering how his former vice president, Joe Biden, is running in a crowded field, which includes Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. But Obama has actually been making similar comments about the strength of women leaders for years, including during his time in the White House.
Jamie Smith, who worked as an adviser in the Obama White House, noted Obama’s previous comments in a message on Facebook Monday.
“POTUS said this all the time when I worked for him,” Smith wrote. “He was endlessly fascinated by the strength of women. We discussed this a lot because I was – at the time – one of (maybe the only?) pregnant person in the West Wing. He marveled at our strength and the magic we bring to the world on every level.”
Obama launched a new initiative in August aimed at voting reform and fighting against gerrymandering.
