Benazir Bhutto, once, twice, almost thrice Prime Minister of Pakistan, died in the streets of her beloved Pakistan in 2007. As a woman prime minister of a Muslim country, educated in the west, and governing an entire country in the east plus a decorated Ivy League scholar, I expected Bhutto to fulfill my image of the über feminist. Therefore, I was surprised to learn that Bhutto, as decorated a career woman as she was, still sought the institution of marriage through arrangement by her handlers.
Bhutto was educated at Radcliffe and Oxford in the 60′s and 70′s, elected to the post of Prime Minister, deposed, re-elected and then jailed in the 80′s, self-exiled in the 90′s and gunned down in 2007 just before taking office for a third time. Her life read like a “Shakespearean tragedy.” With all this going on who has time to get married?
That was her exact dilemma. Yet she sensed that without a marriage she would not be taken seriously by male heads of state who might prefer a dinner date over signing a treaty with her.
In this circumstance Bhutto did what any good princess would: She sent her handlers scouring the countryside for a suitable husband.
And, wow, what a husband they found. Initially part businessman, part playboy her husband became a domestic over-achiever, father-mother all rolled into one sensitive and responsible parent, a parent who conscientiously provided a sense of domesticity to both children and Bhutto. He was a parent who maintained domestic security for their two children when Bhutto was absent. He also provided the glue when she was present but way too preoccupied for dentist appointments and homework charts.
This was the greatest irony of Benazir Bhutto’s life. Bhutto was an independent, educated, pro-life feminist whose sphere of influence, as she resided and presided over a Muslim country, was world-class and yet she needed to reach for the structure of marriage to aggrandize her power on the world diplomatic stage. And an arranged marriage no less!!!
So let this be a lesson to all women pushing the glass ceiling: Even filling a role of head of state will never erase or eradicate thousands of years of patriarchal rule. And the comforts of home and family will never transpose the achievements of work life. Even a female head of state needs to bake cookies once in awhile.
