Obama: Put Women in Charge of Every Government for Two Years and Things Would Be Better

Former President Barack Obama says governments around the world would run better if women were put in charge of all of them for two years. The remark has become one of the most shared political clips of the week.

Obama made the comments during a conversation with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin at Salem State University in Salem, Massachusetts, this month. The event, part of the Salem State Series, was held at the university's O'Keefe Sports Complex and drew about 3,600 people, with hundreds more watching from a second campus venue. Goodwin, a Pulitzer Prize winning historian, has written extensively about American presidents, and the conversation focused on leadership.

"Even when I was president, I sometimes fantasized about if you put women in charge of every government for like two years and then just kind of saw, all right, how are things going?" Obama said.

He added: "I have a strong belief that things would, they wouldn't be perfect. But they'd be better. I'm confident about that. I really do."

The conversation covered his years in the White House, the pressures of the job and the qualities he believes good leaders share. But this was the line that traveled. C-SPAN shared a clip of the remarks on Friday, and it spread quickly across social media, where it was viewed and debated by millions.

Supporters called it a compliment to women leaders and a fair point about the way power is shared around the world. Critics, including several conservative commentators, mocked the idea. They argued that leadership should be judged by results, not by gender, and that the idea of swapping out every government at once was a fantasy by his own description. A few asked which women leaders he had in mind, since female heads of government have led through wars, recessions and scandals just like men.

It is not the first time he has said it. In December 2019, at a leadership event in Singapore, Obama made a very similar argument, saying the world would see improvement across the board if women ran more countries. At that event he told women in the audience they were not perfect, but that he believed they were better than men at leading. The fact that he returned to the same idea nearly seven years later suggests it is a view he holds firmly, not an offhand joke.

The comments also land at a time when the question of who leads the Democratic Party next is wide open. Obama left office in January 2017 and remains one of the party's most visible figures, often speaking at universities and events like this one. Anything he says about leadership is quickly read as a signal about the direction of the party.

Whether people see it as a harmless thought experiment or a political statement, the clip has started a debate that is still going.

Would the world be better with women running every government for two years? YES OR NO?